Hell or High Water
by the ersatz diplomat
Summary: "It should have been a relief, all of it. Instead, I had been wide awake every night for a week with an anxious knot in the pit of my stomach, waiting for something to go horribly, horribly wrong." Harry Dresden is a dorky dad and awkward boyfriend...and literally everyone he knows is giving him grief about it.
1. not the greatest feeling ever

I write what I want to read, so here's Harry: dorky dad and awkward boyfriend, with literally everyone he knows giving him shit about it. Starting with probably the last guy he wants to see. Set riiiight after _Skin Game. _Like a couple days after.

**May contain**: passive-aggressive bickering between two ridiculously OP grown-ass men, _Caddyshack_ references?_,_ more petty bickering, a callback to _Dead Beat, _some BDE

**Definitely contains**: adult language/themes, mentions of suicide

* * *

I was sitting at the bar in Mac's, about a week and a half out from the last real sleep I'd had, and four cups deep in the dented steel coffee pot he had wordlessly left in front of me. It was still a few hours before lunch, dim and quiet. I rubbed at my eyes, exhausted.

The tavern was completely empty and had been since I arrived, and unintentionally scared off the morning crowd. It was just me and Mac, who was silently sweeping up, until the door swung open, and someone dropped into the seat to my left.

The last person I had expected to see; a man of indeterminate age, his face not lined enough to be old, his grey eyes too cold and empty to be young. He stood nearly as tall as me, in a backwards black baseball cap and a military-style wool coat.

I was kind of surprised to see him, until he set a plant down on the bar – a white orchid in a pot shaped like a little waving good-luck cat, and I had to hide a grin behind my coffee.

Maybe I shouldn't have been so surprised after all.

"Hey, Dresden."

"Hey," I said, as he took a look around. There was no one here to bother us, not that anybody with even a vague idea about who either of us were would try.

"How is she?"

"Alive." I drained the last of my coffee and refilled the mug. "Doing alright, considering."

"Good."

"Should be out of the hospital the day after tomorrow."

"Good. That's what the kid said." He glanced up at the mirror, meeting my eyes for a moment. "Said it was Nicodemus."

"Yeah," I nodded. "He had me hostage, and Murphy went after him."

It was tough to get a bead on him, rare that any emotion touched his ageless face, but today Kincaid looked almost kind of pissed.

"Your skinny ass is not worth that much."

"No shit," I agreed. "He baited her into it."

"Like that's hard to do." He rolled his eyes, but it was kind of fond, and the line of his shoulders seemed less tense. Maybe he cared, as much as a guy like that could care, or he wouldn't be here. If he did, it was probably for the same reasons I did – Karrin just had that effect on people, regardless of whether they were actually _people_.

...Or maybe I just hoped he cared, for my own sake. I mean, at least I still had a soul.

I wasn't sure how much he knew about what had been going on, other than the fact that Murphy was in the hospital after her scrap with Nicodemus...who had been dumb enough to put some of his heist plans down on paper.

"I warned her about getting involved with those swords," he huffed. "Never ends well."

So he knew that much. "When?"

"When didn't I? Last time we talked, for sure. And a couple months before I—" Kincaid mimed a finger gun at me and clicked his tongue against his teeth. "She figured that out pretty quick, by the way."

"You don't fucking say."

"Hey, I'm not the one who forgot to account for the fact that Karrin is a damn detective while planning out _my_ needlessly-intricate assisted-suicide attempts."

"Who's the bigger idiot? The dumbass who makes the plan or the one who agrees to it?"

"Probably the guy who thought he could pull a fast one over on a queen of Faerie. Or the guy paraphrasing _Star Wars."_

"Probably," I said, as he nodded at the stack of empty coffee cups on the bar to my right. I slid one down the bar, spaghetti western saloon style. "You gonna go see her?"

"No," Kincaid said bluntly, as he caught it. "No, I don't think I will."

He reached for the coffee pot. Mac didn't serve milk or sugar, the coffee was just a little burnt and strong enough to fuel interdimensional travel. I already felt on-edge and vaguely nauseous, one more cup and I'd probably buzz right out of the visible spectrum.

"What do you know about the crew she's been working with lately?" he asked, wincing as he took a drink.

I frowned. "The Monoc guys? I've met their boss a time or two. They can't be that bad, or she wouldn't."

"They sent one of their recruiters after me, way back when. She was… well, you've met one."

"The second most terrifying woman I've ever run into in a dark alley?"

"And for you, that's saying something."

The Hellhound drank his coffee with a grimace. I drummed my fingers against the bar. We sat in silence, except for the whir of the ceiling fans and the sound of Mac's broom on the floor. It felt like we were both kind of dreading the rest of the conversation; for a long, long moment, neither of us spoke.

"So. When are we gonna kill him?"

Kincaid had his own tiny blonde reason for wanting Nicodemus dead, though by now she probably could have killed Nicky and all the Nickleheads with a wave of her hand, if she was allowed to do it, which she was not. Nothing was ever easy.

"Eventually. I mean, he is my least favorite immortal douchebag."

"Backhanded compliments are not a good look for you, but I'll take it." He studied me critically for a moment, eyes narrowed. "I have to say, you seem to have a much better handle on this whole Winter thing than...whatsisname. Your predecessor."

"Who, Slate? Well, I'm not mainlining heroin," I shrugged. "So I got that goin' for me, which is nice."

Even outdated movie references don't usually land with the paranormal crowd, but Kincaid snorted.

"Are you sure you don't want to go see her?" I asked.

"No," he said. "I enjoy being anatomically correct."

We both kind of laughed, but it was a hollow, unfunny sound. Neither of us had done right by her, we both knew it, and only one of us had been pardoned for our roles in my admittedly disastrous plan to off myself via hitman. I kind of got the impression he wasn't exactly thrilled about it being me.

...Or maybe I was just projecting.

"You know," he said reasonably, after a beat. "If you wanted us _both_ to fuck her over so goddamn bad, you could have just asked_."_

It took my sleep-deprived brain a second to figure out what he meant, and god, it was going to take something a lot stronger than coffee to scrub _that_ image out. And then it occurred to me how deeply satisfying it would have been, for a multitude of reasons, to throw him headfirst into the mirror behind the bar, but that was the reaction Kincaid expected. He was trying to find out how deep Winter's claws were sunk, to gauge what kind of threat I might be now, trying to push my buttons.

...Or else he was serious, in which case, _yikes._

"Eh." I shrugged. "Just seems like that kind of thing would turn into a competition. People get embarrassed. Feelings get hurt. Winning... well, it gets kind of boring after a while, y'know what I mean?"

He stared at me, silent and expressionless.

"Guess not," I smiled.

The door to the tavern swung open with a gust of cold, wet February air. Two of Mac's regulars swept in mid-conversation, saw us and immediately stopped. They turned and beat a quick retreat out the door.

Kincaid was still staring at me, not quite glaring. A muscle in his jaw twitched, like he was either going to swing at me, or crack up.

I smiled a little wider.

"But you _do_ know that Karrin would shoot you for saying that. And then me, for hearing it. And then nobody gets to have any fun. Well." The cup in my hand had gone cold. _Really_ cold. The contents were slushy, half-frozen, and I drank it anyway. "Nobody except her."

"She'd shoot me, regardless. Apparently the only thing you have to do is tell a few lame-ass jokes and all is forgiven."

"Maybe so. But if you'd done your job like a good little assassin, we wouldn't be having this awkward fucking conversation, now, would we?"

Kincaid threw his head back and laughed for real, hoarse and creaky, like he didn't do it very often. It was unsettling as hell, like _abandoned Pripyat amusement park_ levels of creepy.

"See?" I said. "Works on you, too."

He shook his head and fell silent for a moment, reaching for the coffee pot. "So you and her–"

"Yep."

"Guess it was bound to happen sooner or later." He held out the coffee pot. I shook my head. He poured the rest into his cup. "I can give you a few tips, if you want–"

"What makes you think I need any?"

"Whoa." Kincaid blinked at me. "Imagine if you'd had a pair like that on you, way back when. We could have avoided this awkward fucking conversation _entirely_."

"Well, you know what they say–"

"Nice guys finish last?"

"I'd worry less about who's finishing when." I watched the last half inch of coffee freeze solid in the bottom of my cup. The ceramic frosted over and began to crack. "And more about the fury of a patient man."

He held both hands up, palms out, and was quiet for a moment before he turned to me with a grin.

"It's a lot less fun to fuck with you than it used to be."

"I can't tell if that's a compliment or if you're still trying to hurt my feelings."

"Eh," he said, waving a hand. "Just making sure you still have 'em."

"Do _you?"_

"Hypothetically." Kincaid made a face and shrugged. "Like, say if a friend of mine calls me up out of nowhere and asks me to kill him as a favor, that might hurt my feelings. If I had any."

"What? We're _not_ friends–_"_

"Or," he continued darkly, "If the woman I've been seeing says some friend of mine's name in bed, that might do it."

"We're not—_what."_

"Unfortunately, we are. And I don't enjoy shooting my friends, Dresden. Don't make me do it again."

There was no change in his tone or expression, still pithy and amused at my obvious discomfort as he stood and took something from a coat pocket. He set it on the bar with a hollow _thunk_ of metal on wood; the empty brass casing of a fifty-caliber rifle round.

From anyone else it would have seemed like a threat, but that wasn't his style. We both already knew he could kill me. We both knew it probably wouldn't stick.

And then he pushed the little flowerpot across the bar toward me, smirking.

"Give this to Karrin for me, will you? You remember how much she loves her damn plants."

We stared at each other. I set the frozen mug on the bar, gently, and it shattered like it had been dipped in liquid nitrogen.

"Good talk." Kincaid clapped me on the shoulder, still grinning as he headed toward the door. "Let me know when we're gonna kill him, yeah? Call me."

I waited until he was gone, then buried my face in both hands and made a noise like a dying pterodactyl. That could have gone better. Could have gone worse. Definitely could have gone the rest of my life without any of it. And of course Kincaid had to get the last word. He knew that would bother me more than anything.

Oh, god. Maybe we _were_ friends.

"We're _not_, though," I said to no one in particular.

Mac made a non-committal noise as he swept the remains of the busted coffee mug into a garbage can. From between my fingers, I saw a bottle of whiskey and two glasses land on the bar. He eyed the potted plant doubtfully as he opened the whiskey and poured a measure in each glass.

"The last time I brought her flowers she threw them at me." I took the glass he pushed towards me and downed the contents in one searing gulp. "If I take her that, she's going to nuke me from orbit with it."

Mac snorted, which was as close as he ever got to laughing. "Scared."

"I'm not scared."

He raised an eyebrow. "Hmph."

"I'm _not,"_ I insisted, as I got out my wallet and counted out a few bills onto the bar.

It was only mostly a boldfaced lie – I was fucking terrified.

Things had been going incredibly well for the past few days. Just ridiculously nice. I had a place to stay, enough money in my pocket that I didn't have to worry, hadn't had a headache _at all_. Got to spend every evening reading to Maggie until she fell asleep. Got to spend a couple hours every afternoon making out with my best friend like we were giggling, oversexed teenagers.

It should have been a relief, all of it. Instead, I had been wide awake every night for a week with an anxious knot in the pit of my stomach, waiting for something to go horribly, horribly wrong.

"Leaving?" the bartender asked, as he collected the empty glasses.

"Headed to the hospital."

Mac nodded thoughtfully. "Driving?"

"I was gonna call a cab."

"Wait." He held up a hand - _five minutes._ Then he set my glass back down and poured me a double before he ambled back to the grill. The smell of steak sandwiches floated through the bar, still a little early for lunch, but my stomach growled anyway. I reached over the bar for the old black rotary phone and dialed for a cab.

I nursed the glass of whiskey as I frowned at the cute little plant in its cute little pot, wondering how on earth I was going to explain it to Karrin:

_Hey babe, you'll never guess who I ran into at the bar between attempting to caffeinate myself into the ethereal plane and day-drinking my way through my third existential crisis since breakfast!_

A moment later, the bartender set a brown paper bag down in front of me, Murphy's name on it in black marker.

"Won't throw that," he said, which the most he'd said to me all morning. Probably all week.

"Mac, you're a goddamn genius."

* * *

keep an eye out for ch2


	2. too quiet in this room

_**May contain: **_Harry, absolutely unable to stop compulsively investigating, and completely missing the joke. Some _Witcher_, a little LOTR, a hint of _Archer. _A reference to the short story _Something Borrowed. _Another callback to _Dead Beat_, one to the end of _Changes _and one to the uh...dream sequence in _Skin Game. _

_**Definitely contains:**_ More Words. Adult language/themes, mentions of suicide. Attempted matchmaking, unsolicited advice and some mild unintentional kinkshaming from my favorite Jedi.

* * *

It felt kind of invasive, going through her stuff. Murphy was by far my closest friend, but _still_.

Usually, when I was rummaging through other people's belongings, it was because they were missing, or dead, or had done or were about to do something terrible.

...Not usually because they asked me to get them a clean pair of socks.

She had sent me to her place with a list of things she wanted me to pick up. I had dropped by every day to feed Mister, but the only thing I had gone through was the fridge. I had somehow forgotten that Murphy was one of those unhinged maniacs who make their lunches a week at a time out of healthy green stuff. She wasn't completely hopeless – there was also the last of a six-pack of Cokes, and some leftover pizza. I grabbed the can and a slice, and checked the list, in her neat handwriting on hospital stationery.

_Water the plants! _was first, so I tracked down the watering can and hit all the ones in the living room before I forgot, and the half-dozen more in the kitchen that I had brought back from her overcrowded hospital room. Even the little orchid in the cat-shaped pot, though she had threatened to throw it out the window when I told her who it was from.

I had refrained from telling her about the rest of that conversation for both our sakes. Mine and hers, not the plant's, though it had been granted a last-minute pardon. Mister followed me as I made the rounds, and twitched a chewed-up ear in distrust at the ceramic cat. I tossed him a bit of pizza crust in solidarity.

Karrin's house was as incongruously cozy as ever. She was the last person anyone would ever expect to live under the same roof as macramé owls and lace doilies, but there they were, somehow just as at home as the user manual for a rocket launcher sitting on the coffee table. Kind of like _I Love Lucy_ meets _The A-Team._

I gathered up a few things I thought she might want. One of her grandmother's crochet afghans, the stack of books and magazines on an end table, her favorite coffee cup – the one with the quote from _Twin Peaks_ on it. I found the gym bag she had asked for on a shelf in the hall closet, and paused in the doorway to her room.

The bed had been made and the clothes I had left were washed and folded in a neat stack on the dresser, though there hadn't been anyone staying here for a week. Probably by her mother, who had stumbled in on us at the hospital the day before, getting as hot and heavy as two people with that many combined injuries could manage.

Which wasn't much at all. Still entirely G-rated. Mostly.

I collected my stuff first and threw it in the bag, then looked at the list again:

_Water the plants!  
__Clothes/Shoes/Jacket  
__9mm top drawer by the bed  
__Toothbrush/toothpaste/soap/etc.  
__Laptop  
__Check the mail  
D__on't forget about Mister_

Clothes first, then. Murphy's closet was organized by function, season, color and hell, probably alphabetically, too. I sorted through the absurd neatness, collecting an armful of her favorite standbys; flannel, yoga pants, a selection from a vast assortment of hoodies. I grabbed a pair of black low-tops with the left toe permanently scuffed from a Harley gearshift, and a slightly grimy and worn-out Cubs cap.

Below the rack of clothing was a shelf of green ammo cans. Ten or twelve of 'em, labeled in order of ascending firepower. A few rifle bags leaned against the corner, a few heavy plate carriers, and that was just the stuff that was _legal_. I shut the closet, grinning.

Mister leapt up onto the bed, watching me as he stretched out with a self-satisfied purr.

"Don't get too comfortable, pal," I warned him. "You're going, too."

I turned to the dresser, opening a drawer to pajamas; basketball shorts and blood drive-shirts. Socks from the next drawer – I shoveled them into the bag by the handful. You can never have too many socks. I hesitated at the bottom drawer. Gotta have underwear, too. Hers were all comfortable, dark colors and practical fabric, and into the gym bag they went. Except for the interesting little number that I, folding to overwhelming curiosity, picked up by one delicate strap.

"Hell's bells."

It was nothing but nearly invisible mesh and a few scraps of strategically-placed black lace, dangling from my fingertips. A bra in the same fashion peeked out from a pink paper shopping bag shoved into the corner of the drawer, with a copy of a credit card receipt.

"Hm." _Don't do it, _warned a voice that I, driven by investigatory compulsion or whatever, blissfully ignored. I picked up the receipt, smoothing out the crinkled paper. It had been pricey, from a little boutique in Bucktown. The receipt was hurriedly signed with Karrin's initials, dated from a while back. From the very day I'd had myself shot, I noticed upon closer inspection.

"...Fuck."

I put it all back into the drawer and shut it, and sat on the edge of the bed with my face in my hands… that smelled like perfume. Faint but familiar and sweet – heliotrope and vanilla, strangely vulnerable without the usual accompanying scent of leather motorcycle jacket and gunpowder. She must have been wearing it at the same time as—

"Ah, _fuck."_

When she had come back to pick me up from Thomas's boat, obviously. We had planned to go out for a drink, and I had stood her up and _died_, and spent so long trying not to think about it that I hadn't really considered what I'd missed. I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry, and couldn't do either. The thought had short-circuited something in my brain and now it was stuck in a daydreamy feedback loop; her in that expensive French lingerie _and_ the motorcycle jacket, in my lap, all warm skin and soft lips, and that sound she made when I—

"Jesus Christ." I shook my head and reached for the list I'd left on the dresser. "Get it together, Dresden."

And if I wasn't sure then that karma had finally come around to kick my ass, I was when I found the next item she had requested, in the top drawer of the bedside table.

It was a subcompact pistol in sleek monochrome black steel, _SIG SAUER P938 NIGHTMARE_ etched down one side of the slide. Her holdout; the one she'd shot Maeve with, last year. The one she had pressed against my temple in that awful, incredible dream that kept playing on repeat every time I drifted off. Or variations of it, anyway. Minus the jump-scare ending but to a similarly unsatisfying...non-conclusion.

"Well, that's a new one," I sighed, staring disappointedly down at myself. I put the gun and spare magazine in a coat pocket. "Don't judge me," I told my reflection in the mirror on the back of the closet door. "It was _hot."_

I checked the list again and gathered up a phone charger, lip balm, half a billion elastic hair ties, tossing all into a pocket of the bag. I hesitated for a second, then picked up the paperback that had been under the gun; a trashy historical romance, something Bob would have loved. I thumbed through the dogeared pages, coming to the conclusion that the guy who runs my subconscious was accurate in his assessment of what she might enjoy.

Really, _really_ accurate. I slammed it shut and threw it back in the drawer, and fled the bedroom for the unsexy safety of the bathroom.

Or so I'd hoped. I rounded up soap and shampoo from the shower, a hairdryer and a brush from under the sink. Toothbrush and toothpaste from the medicine cabinet, and a little credit-card sized cardboard sleeve of tiny pills, which I frowned at until I realized what they were.

"Oh, boy."

Well, at least one of us had some common sense.

Wide-eyed, I dropped it all in the Adidas duffel, now nearly too full to zip shut. I left the bag by the front door and headed to the spare bedroom Murphy used as an office. I powered down the laptop by standing as far from it as possible and poking the _on_ button with a pencil. Or what I thought was the _on_ button, anyway. It was one of those milspec, armored-looking things, like it could have been dropped off a building and it might have survived, but would probably explode if I so much as sneezed. I put it in its own case, carefully.

Among the half-dozen family photos on the desk, I recognized my own mug. I remembered the moment but not who had been wielding the camera at Billy and Georgia's wedding – the real one in Forthill's office, not the ceremony that had been crashed by faeries.

It was a good picture, candid, in black and white. We both sat on the edge of a desk, in the middle of a conversation I couldn't recall. Karrin brandished Georgia's mangled bouquet of roses at me. I was laughing about something, she was smiling. It was just ridiculously cute in a way that made my stomach do a nervous, distracted backflip, and I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a knock at the front door.

And then it creaked open.

I started into the hall, my mind instantly conjuring demonic assassins or Fomor hitmen or something even worse. Overly-friendly Jehovah's Witnesses? I reached for my gun with one hand, still holding the photo in the other.

"Hello?" called a familiar voice.

Mister trotted out past me and shoulder-checked the shins of the wiry-haired, bespectacled man who shut the door behind him, nearly knocking him down.

"Oh." I sighed in relief. "Hey, Butters."

"Hey, Harry. Murphy said I'd probably find you here." He held out a big cardboard box. "Mom sent some leftovers."

"Leftovers?" I took the box as he pulled the picture frame from my fingers. I peered at the contents. Plastic containers and good smells; roast chicken, mashed potatoes and half a dozen other things. "This is enough to feed an army."

"Yeah, she kind of went a little overboard this weekend. Whoa," said Butters, studying the photo. "When was this?"

"Billy and Georgia's wedding."

"Too cute." Waldo raised an eyebrow at me. "For a second I thought I had missed something important and I owed you guys a toaster."

"...Huh?"

"Never mind," he said brightly as he left the photo on a bookcase and followed me into the sunny little kitchen. "Hungry?"

I put the box on the counter, in what space was left between _get well soon_ plants. "Starving."

"You get the beer," he said, "I'll run the microwave."

I had depleted the stash of Mac's brown in the kitchen, but there was an entire case in the old fridge out in the garage. I grabbed a few beers in each hand and made my way back inside.

Butters set a plate in front of me, and then sat down across from me with his own. Judging from the way he tore into the food, it didn't bother him to eat at a table where he had stitched up a patient just last week. He'd seen worse.

Or maybe he was just really hungry.

"How's the leg?" he asked, looking up at me as if he'd just remembered, too.

"Feeling much better."

"Still taking those antibiotics?"

"Finished them yesterday."

"Good. And your arm?" he continued, his tone doctorly. "You're still wearing that brace, right?"

"Yes, Mother," I said as I snapped the caps off two bottles and set one in front of each of us.

"For at least another week, maybe two," he warned between sips. "Just to be safe. Your x-rays are almost impossible to read."

"It feels better." I wiggled my fingers. "But I don't think I'll be playing Carnegie Hall anytime soon."

Butters snorted. We ate in silence for a moment. He hadn't been kidding about his mom being a good cook. Even the reheated leftover noodle casserole was good. Miles better than my typical island fare of army surplus MREs and cold cans of Spaghettios.

The silence was only a little tense. Butters had been rightfully pissed at me for a while now, and having someone _that nice_ be mad at me was just a gut-wrenching, horrible feeling. Not that he would hold a grudge. He was a better person than that, better than most, or he wouldn't have qualified for his recent promotion to Jedi of the Lord.

"Michael said you found a place in town to stay?" he asked, after a moment.

"Working on it. Got the place, but it's mostly empty, so I've been trying to get things together. It's just up the street from the Carpenters', you can't miss it. Especially with that truck parked out front."

"Need any help?"

"Yeah, actually. I could definitely use another pair of eyes to look over some plans for the wards," I said, tentatively. Now that my deadline was no longer literal, and my brain wasn't trying to explode every ten minutes, and I wasn't helping my actual worst enemy pull a heist on a god, I had time to acknowledge that I had kind of fucked up. I could apologize until I was out of breath, but words were only words. "Just to make sure I'm not missing anything?"

He thought about it and nodded. "Is later this afternoon good?"

"Sure. If you're not busy."

"It's cool. I've got a few errands to run first." The ME sighed tiredly. "And another freaking workout to do."

"Yeah?" I tried not to grin – I had already heard about his foray into the world of fitness from a different source. "Murph said she sent you to the gym."

"With a six-week weightlifting program. Two-a-days. The woman is a sadist," he said around a bite of chicken. "I hurt in places I didn't know about, even with a double major in anatomy and physiology." Butters gestured wildly with his fork. "And apparently what I do every day at work doesn't actually count as _deadlifts_."

I choked on my beer. He continued, impassioned:

"This is my third meal today and it's barely lunchtime. Protein shakes are disgusting. And her Viking buddies' idea of cardio? Me, running down the beach at zero dark thirty in the morning, in the rain, wearing a twenty pound vest, while they chase me, screaming in Norwegian or whatever."

"Pretty sure that's against the Geneva Convention."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure they don't know what that is," he mused. "I know she's going to make me get in the ring, eventually. I'm probably dreading it just as much as she's looking forward to it."

"Probably _not_," I said with a grimace.

He went a little pale and quiet for a moment before he shook it off and spoke.

"So are you two, like," Waldo waved his fork at me like he was casting a spell. "Dating or something? I mean, Karrin seems awfully happy for somebody who's just spent a week in the hospital. Aside from the morphine drip, I mean. And don't get me started on you—"

"..._Me?"_

"When you're not completely spaced-out, you look like the cat who ate the canary. I haven't seen you look this smug since you brought a dinosaur back from the dead."

_"_You know, technically Sue wasn't back from the dead. She was definitely still very dead – you of all people should know that, Butters. It's your job."

"Smug and dodging the question. I'm no investigator, but there's definitely something going on."

"Okay, okay. _Something_. But we're not, like...advertising it."

His eyebrows climbed as he turned his attention back to his mashed potatoes. _"Sure."_

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'm just saying," he shrugged between bites. "You guys are kind of obvious."

"We haven't even told anybody—"

"Okay, what part did you think _wasn't_ obvious? When Murphy threw down with the demon holding you hostage, out in the middle of the street like it was an episode of _COPS_?" Butters frowned at me. "Or the part where you cussed out an angel for not immediately fixing her injuries? And that was recently, we could go a little further back and talk about how Karrin got fired for helping you, after getting demoted for helping you, and how despite all that, she's still a willing participant in your shenanigans."

"My shenanigans are cheeky and fun," I said through a mouthful of dinner roll. He grinned.

"Oh, like the time you reanimated the remains of a sixty-five million year-old, ten-ton apex predator from the Cretaceous Period and marched it through downtown because somebody was blackmailing your girlfriend?"

"Blackmailing _me_ and threatening my — okay, that was mostly extenuating circumstances? And she's not my—"

"I was _there_, Gandalf," he said, a tad annoyed. "And it's all really cute, but it would be great if you guys could manage to get the heck over yourselves already. And maybe, I dunno_, _not die in the process? And then maybe stop subjecting the rest of us to your weird, collateral damage-y, insurance premium-wrecking version of foreplay."

I took a deep breath and nodded, because god, he wasn't _wrong_. I'd die for her, or at least I had done my best, and she had killed for me on multiple occasions. And as much as I'd hoped, I had never expected us to have the chance to be anything more than friends…who cared a lot and pretended they weren't attracted to each other and used violence as a substitute for sex.

"Solid advice from an expert source," I said, red-faced. "Thank you, Doctor Butters. Next on the News at Noon, meteorologist Harry Dresden. What's the forecast looking like, Harry?" I asked myself. "Well, Other Harry, it's thirty-two degrees and cloudy with a hundred percent chance of _dude, can we please talk about literally anything else?"_

Butters cackled, beating a fist against the kitchen table so hard the plates rattled. "I'm sorry, did I embarrass the big scary Winter Knight?" he laughed, gesturing between us. "Is that what this is?"

"Come on, man. I'm not saying I don't deserve it, but I'm already down. You can stop kicking."

He fixed me with a serious stare, pushing his glasses up his nose and for a moment he looked kind of knightly, himself. "Harry, if dragging you is the only way I can get you to have a normal human conversation with me, then so be it."

I sighed. There was no way I was coming out of this normal human conversation with my pride intact. Not that I had any in the first place.

Then he nodded at the gym bag sitting by the door, and grinned at me. "So are you moving in or what?"

"No, I actually – so I kind of, uh. I kind of asked Karrin to stay with me for a little while?" I said quickly. "Just until she's on her feet again."

Butters' eyebrows started climbing again. "Oh, really?"

"Yes, really – don't give me that look."

"What look?" he said, innocently. "This is just how I look when I'm happy for my friends who are finally getting together, and moving in together? Wow."

"Just for a while. She'll be out tomorrow, and you know she won't ask for help," I said, trying to keep a defensive note from creeping into my tone. "And she can't even use crutches with her shoulder like that—"

"Sure, sure," he said, entirely too reasonably and still grinning. "Makes sense."

"And until I personally dropkick Nicodemus and all his pals into a bottomless fucking pit, I won't believe for a second that he won't come after her. Or me. Or you, for that matter," I said, angrier with every word, colder by the second. I tried to take a drink, then peered at the contents of my beer. Frozen solid. I sighed. "Goddammit, not again."

"True." Butters nodded sagely, the corner of his mouth twitched. "But that's not what's bugging you."

"It's just...it's been a while, you know?" I set the frozen beer aside and opened another, trying not to sound as pathetic as I felt. "I haven't lived with a woman since... well, if you don't count Thomas—"

"Which, obviously, we do."

"It's complicated." I gathered up our empty plates and put them in the sink. "And neither of us are really good at relationships—"

"You say that, but I once witnessed you and Murphy have a conversation _entirely_ in Eminem lyrics. That's more married than my parents ever were."

"Alright, now we're getting ahead of ourselves," I said as I reached for the dish soap.

"Just saying." He was interrupted by his phone, which beeped and whistled like R2-D2 as he checked the time. "Oh jeez, I gotta go. Those meatheads make me do fifty pushups for every minute I'm late."

"You could always go running with Thomas and me, instead. It won't be more fun, but it might be less…hate-crime-y?"

"_You_ shouldn't be running anywhere, not with your leg like that. Not for a few more weeks, anyway." He gathered up the empty beer bottles and chucked them in the trash. "I'll drop by tonight. Take the rest of that food with you. If I have to see another piece of chicken, I might puke."

"Good luck," I said, and I meant it as we exchanged a fist bump, and Butters hurried out to get whipped into fighting shape by a team of quasi-immortal berserkers.

The guy didn't really need a holy sword, he was already sharp enough. All I had to do was sit him at a table with anybody who needed to be taken down a notch and let him unleash a well-intentioned but ruthless verbal assault on their biggest insecurities.

It probably wouldn't work on monsters but it had definitely worked on me which, strangely, made me feel a little better as I finished washing the dishes.

I hauled everything I'd collected to my borrowed truck, then gathered up the mail. I tucked it all into a coat pocket, scooped Mister up and headed home.

It didn't _quite_ feel like home yet, but I was working on it. I was putting a bookshelf together at the new digs, several hours and a few more beers later when I heard a car pull into the driveway, followed by a sharp _shave and a haircut _knock.

I could just see a dark, curly head through the square panes of glass at the top of the wooden door.

"Hey, this place is great!" Butters said as I answered, and he pushed a paper bag from_ Bed Bath and Beyond_ into my hands as I stepped aside to let him in. "Your doorbell isn't working, though."

"Yeah, I'll get around to it." In the bag was a cardboard box containing a shiny new toaster. "Cool," I said. "Thanks, man. I needed one of these."

He just sighed at me liked I'd missed a joke, and shook his head, grinning. "_Mazel tov."_

* * *

Happy Valentine's Day, btw.


	3. this ain't a getaway

_**May contain: **_trace amounts of _Breaking Bad_, _X-Files_, some _Nine-Nine. _Some John Carpenter. A throwback to _Storm Front._ Mention of a few nekkid moments in _Cold Days._ The Fomor shootout in _Skin Game. _

_**Definitely contains:**_ Even _More _Words? A nice, long chapter since I literally have nothing else going on right now. Adult-ish stuff. Witty repartee aka dorky flirting. Classic thriller movie references as a love language. Awkward attempts at base-stealing. Fair warning: This is what happens when I'm stuck in shelter-in-place quarantine, up to my ears in a very large bottle of wine. I hope you are all doing well and staying safe.

* * *

"You're parked in the fire lane."

"Complain, complain, complain."

"Now when you said your place, you meant somewhere inside the city limits, with indoor plumbing, right?"

"Maybe." I pushed the wheelchair toward the truck I had borrowed, dodging puddles. It had finally stopped raining for about five minutes, long enough to make a mad dash down the sidewalk outside of the hospital. It was March, barely – still as cold and dreary as February. "We'll see."

"Because I'm only okay with this as long as I can wash my hair," Murphy continued with a skeptical glance up at me. "I have enough dry shampoo in there to put out a kitchen fire."

"Yikes."

"And I'm not doing it the way you do it, standing out in the rain with a bottle of Old Spice—"

"Hey, that was _one time_—

"Sure, it was."

"And I was taking a normal shower that got interrupted—"

"Normal," she scoffed.

"Well, interrupted by a demon," I admitted. The intentionally-improvised outdoor shower thing had definitely happened more than once, out on the island, but there was no way in hell I was going to admit it. "What is it with you and basic human necessities, anyways?"

"The _necessity_ part?" She looked up at me again, upside down, blue eyes sparkling. "When I agreed to stay with you, I was all oxy'd up. I didn't know what I was saying. I would have agreed to anything—"

"..._Anything?"_

"And technically," she continued, blithely ignoring the innuendo in my tone. "Technically, I didn't even really agree, you just _told me_ I was staying with you—"

"Your mom thought it was a good idea," I said, grinning hugely.

"Yeah?" Karrin couldn't even manage to glare at me without smiling, too. "Roll me further, bitch."

Couldn't flip me off either, with one arm in a sling and the other trying to hold a copy paper box of prescription bottles, _get well soon_ cards and flowers in her lap. Thomas had brought her a vase of sunshine-yellow roses so big she could barely see over it.

Steak sandwiches had gone over so much better than flowers – for me, anyway. I'd never been kissed like that before in my life.

"So ungrateful," I said as I pushed the wheelchair towards the truck. "I'm just gonna load you up in the back with the groceries and you can complain all the way there. Don't forget to set the brake on that chair."

There was a gasp from the humorless hospital porter lurking a few steps behind us, who had followed us outside even after I'd taken the wheelchair out of his hands. He watched us suspiciously; the guy had asked what she was in for and Murphy had made some horrifying joke about running into a door.

"Just kidding." I paused, then made like I was going to let down the tailgate. "I'll set the brake, you can't reach it."

_"Harry."_

"Fine. I guess you can ride up front." I unlocked the passenger door and put the box of flowers and prescriptions behind the seat. My broken arm protested a little when I picked her up and set her in the cab of the truck, but she didn't. Still in too much pain to argue about it, I guess. "We're not stopping for ice cream, though, so don't even ask."

Karrin caught a handful of my coat as I moved to shut the door. She pulled me close and kissed me, just once, quick and enthusiastic.

"Get me the hell out of here."

I sent the chair back toward the porter with a well-aimed kick and jogged what felt like a mile back to the driver's side, smiling so hard my face hurt. I shrugged out of my coat and climbed into the truck.

"Here." I draped my coat over her lap. "It takes this behemoth a minute to warm up."

She shot me a look somehow both stubborn _and_ grateful as she moved gingerly into the middle of the bench seat, clumsily doing up the seatbelt. I did the same, then keyed the ignition and the big truck rumbled to life.

"I can't believe he let you borrow this thing. You're a hazard to yourself and others in a Volkswagen, this is like giving you the keys to an Abrams."

"I haven't hit anything yet," I said, as one of the rear tires caught a sidewalk, turning out of the parking lot. I winced, watching her go white around the eyes in the rearview mirror.

"Anything except every curb in the Greater Chicago Area?"

"One more smartass remark and you're hitchhiking the rest of the way, sweetheart."

Murphy snorted softly and leaned her head against my shoulder. I took her uninjured hand, twining my fingers through hers in her lap. I kept an eye on her in the mirror.

She looked exhausted. The deep shadows beneath her blue eyes made them seem a little too bright, made her pretty features seem sharper. The edge of a fading bruise cast a yellow-green tint to her skin near her temple, wisps of blonde hair escaping from a messy ponytail beneath a backwards Cubs cap. A metal and Velcro brace wrapped her left leg from thigh to ankle, over a pair of comfy black yoga leggings. Her left arm was in a sling to immobilize a separated shoulder, partially obscuring the caption on a too-big gray sweatshirt: _Not Today, Satan! _

Mine, or at least it used to be – one I had left on Thomas's boat ages ago, long before nearly everything I owned went up in literal smoke. I found it in her car when I went to settle up with Mike the Mechanic.

Every time I looked at her, my heart broke into a billion murdery pieces, and all I wanted was to wrap her in a fluffy blanket, get her a cup of tea and turn the next person who made her so much as frown into a cloud of red mist.

...Not that Murph had ever needed my help with any of that, and very likely could still manage without it, even down two limbs and in a painkiller haze.

And it was usually me making her frown.

I caught a glimpse of my own face in the mirror. I looked like I'd been through the wringer, too. Definitely need a haircut and a shave. Still grinning like an idiot, but that couldn't be helped.

"You still haven't told me where we're going."

Her eyes were shut as I attempted to navigate early afternoon traffic in Michael's monster truck without turning the interchange into an actual demolition derby. Which was just a lot of trust on her part, and a lot of me trying to refrain from rude gestures and honking while driving a vehicle with a _My Child Is An Honor Student_ sticker on the back bumper.

"Molly bought a place down the street from her folks a while back. It's been sitting empty, so I'm kind of...renting it, now. I guess."

"Harry Dresden in an honest-to-goodness house? Above-ground?"

"Yep. Hot water and everything."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"I can hardly believe it myself."

Even after spending almost every waking moment for the past week trying to get the place in order, I still couldn't believe it. It was too... nice. Too normal.

Not something I had ever expected, but there it was – just like the daughter I had read the first few chapters of _A Wrinkle in Time_ to last night, or the woman next to me in the truck, dozing with her head on my shoulder.

I had convinced myself a long time ago that family and relationships and all that were like art in a museum; something to admire from a distance, not something I should participate in at all. And as oddly normal as it all seemed, I still felt anxious, as if somebody had handed me the original_ Starry Night_ in a gift bag, like_ here you go buddy, this is priceless and irreplaceable, try not to fuck it up. _

I nearly missed my own damn driveway, heading through the neighborhood from the opposite direction as usual. I had to stop and back the truck up a few houses until I got to the right one.

It had been built in the early nineteen-hundreds, one of those Craftsman-style houses with a wide, columned porch that continued across the front and into covered parking just big enough for a Model T. The place sat back from the street behind a couple of big oak trees and a yellow brick walk and driveway. The house itself was a fairly unassuming place, done in earthtone colors, cedar beams, overgrown vines; pretty much the polar opposite of the gingerbread trim and obsessively-neat landscaping of the older Victorian buildings further down the block.

I kinda liked it. I liked that it had a roof that didn't leak and glass in all the windows. I especially liked the fact that it _wasn't_ built over the low-bid medieval version of the underground monster prison from _The Cabin in the Woods._

The fact that there was a Burger King like, five minutes away didn't hurt, either.

I got the truck backed into the driveway after a few tries. The elderly woman next door watched disapprovingly as she checked her mail. Might have been an old lady. Might have been part of angelic hit squad or a faerie patrol. I waved at her. She frowned at me, which didn't help narrow it down.

Karrin slept through all of it, out cold as I tossed my coat over one shoulder and got her out of the seatbelt. Didn't wake up even as I stumbled on the bottom porch step, or when I shifted her to one arm, fumbled the keys from a pocket and unlocked the front door.

It still smelled like fresh paint inside, recently updated and partially-furnished, done to Molly's excellent judgment and exacting specifications. I'd been there for three days before I had realized all the rooms were painted some shade of blue or green or gray – Winter, but cozy.

I picked my way through stacks of cardboard boxes scattered across the hardwood floor; the few belongings I had brought back from the island, things I'd bought, the heaps of stuff the Carpenters had donated to the cause even though I had asked them not to, repeatedly. Some of the furniture had been here already – a set of comfy reclining armchairs and a matching sofa, some antique-looking rugs. Molly had good taste and the money to match, and it was all stuff I would have picked out anyway, as long as I didn't know how much it cost.

I dropped the keys and winced as they rattled, and Karrin woke with a start and a sharp breath.

"Shit. Sorry," I whispered.

"Careful, Harry," she said, tired, but apparently not too tired to stop giving me hell. "If you keep carrying me around and leaving diamonds in my boots, I might think you're serious or something."

"So," I said as my face went warm. We hadn't really talked about that, we'd been too... preoccupied. "You found those?"

"Kind of hard to miss. Put me down."

I set her on her feet. Murphy wrapped her right arm around me as I did, leaning against me to keep from putting any weight on her injured knee. She glanced around the room approvingly.

I tossed my coat over the back of the nearest chair. _"_Those are your cut from the job, by the way."

"Oh, I thought you were trying to drop some kind of hint and you just forgot to put the glue and Playboy Bunny stencil in with the rest of the kit."

"Hell's bells." I definitely appreciated her sleepy grin, but I had made a grave miscalculation in telling her how traumatized I'd been by Maeve's, uh... downstairs disco. "Do whatever you want with them, just don't do _that."_

"There go my weekend plans." Karrin yawned as she looked around again. "Nice digs."

"Almost _too_ nice, right?" I ventured, gesturing vaguely at the glass-fronted, built-in bookshelves on each side of the entryway, more on either side of the fireplace. They say money can't buy happiness but after a few trips to a couple of different half-priced bookstores, I was well on my way to replacing my collection of paperbacks, and that made me pretty damn happy.

That, among other things.

"A normal amount of nice." Her arm around me tightened, close and warm and reassuring. "You're just not used to it yet."

"Definitely more windows than I'm used to."

"I bet that cleaning service of yours does windows. You might have to throw in an order of garlic bread with the pizza, though."

"How—"

I stopped myself. We stared at each other for a moment, narrow-eyed. I'd never told her or anybody else about the faeries that cleaned my apartment — secrecy was part of the whole deal (which had carried over to the new place, I'd found after leaving a few dishes in the sink only for them to reappear clean and in the cabinet).

"...Never mind," I said, and she smiled.

"So this is what you've been up to all week that you wouldn't tell me about?"

"Well, this," I waved a hand at the scattered boxes, the yellow legal pad lists on the coffee table of things that still needed to be done: _get real groceries,_ _find a phone_. "Moving my stuff from the island, buying new stuff. Learning to speak IKEA-ese. And, you know. Setting up the sex dungeon."

"Pfft. I've been in your dungeon, remember? Sexiest thing down there was Bob and his library."

"I'll tell him you said that, next time I see him. I'd tell him you're both fans of the same authors, but he'd probably spontaneously combust."

Murph rolled her eyes but went a faint, very cute shade of pink. "So do I have to wait for the next tour group to wander through or what?"

"This way to the frozen burrito storage facility and takeout menu gallery," I said, and we kind of leaned against each other. Between the knee brace and the bullet wound, we managed to hobble through the living room and into a kitchen far larger than necessary, all gleaming cabinets and stone countertops. Judging by how the shiny new fridge still worked even after I'd been there for a few days, Molly must have had the help of her Svartalf pals, but even they couldn't make a wizard-proof microwave oven. The only two appliances on the counter were a coffee maker and the toaster Butters had given me.

"Dining room," I pointed at a pair of double doors across the kitchen. The dining room was still empty – there was already a perfectly good table in the kitchen. "That other door goes out to the back porch, and the stairs are around the corner."

"There's a second story?"

"An attic, but I keep knocking my head on the ceiling every time I go up there," I said, and she snickered as we started out of the kitchen and down the dim hall. "You'll fit though. I might park you up there with a telescope, so you can spy on the neighbors."

"Don't tempt me. You know I love a good stakeout," she said, nodding toward the nearest door. "What's behind Door Number One?"

"Office or whatever." I gave the first door on the left a push. Upon moving in I had managed to plunge the room into instant chaos. Crates and boxes and wizardly implements were stacked on and around a vanishing secondhand desk, most of it was stuff I had picked up at the fringe shops around town earlier in the week. A few empty shelves were pushed against the board-and-batten walls.

"Okay, _that_ looks more like somewhere you live." Murphy made a face as she peered into the room.

"Rude," I said as I reached for the door across the hall. "Door Number Two."

"And _that's_...just too damn cute."

It was pretty damn cute. Charity had helped me set this room up, I think she was worried I was overwhelmed, and she was mostly right. She had picked the furniture, had it delivered and assembled, handmade the quilt on the bed _and_ the curtains, and put everything together with minimal help from the grumpy wizard who knew all of zero things about raising daughters.

I had put the glow-in-the-dark star stickers on the ceiling myself, though. And the WPA-style travel posters on the pale blue walls:_ Mos Eisley - A Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy_,_ Hoth is for Lovers,_ _Visit Endor's Forest Moon!_

I had also tracked down a couple dozen age-appropriate chapter books, too, which now resided in the shelf below the bay window, where Mister was currently curled up, having claimed the seat as a Good Place to Nap. A cuddly stuffed Chewbacca that roared when squeezed was perched next to him. I'd found all kinds of art supplies and some Lego sets and coloring books, too. A very small desk took up one corner, and on it one of those nifty new little handheld Nintendos and a stack of games, all still in the box despite how badly I wanted to mess with it. A pair of green lightsabers – the cool kind with the sound effects – rested in a real sword rack on top of the dresser. Thomas and I had already tried those out, much to the dismay of the old woman next door who had witnessed our epic front yard battle.

So it turns out shopping, when done with a hilariously big budget and for a little bitty kid, is actually a hell of a lot of fun. Who knew?

"You, uh... you think she'll like it?"

"Absolutely."

"You don't think it's, like..." I leaned against the doorframe and chewed on my lip, suddenly nervous though I wasn't sure why. "Too much, or..."

"Well." Murphy leaned against the opposite side of the doorframe, looking me over with an amused smile. "You haven't gone and lassoed her an actual unicorn yet, so no. Not too much."

"We've talked about this, Karrin. Unicorns aren't nice and they don't make good pets."

"You know what I mean." She reached for my hand, lacing her fingers through mine. "I would have loved to have my own room at that age. My own stuff, not having to share my _Nancy Drew_ books with Lisa? Forget about it."

"Of course you read _Nancy Drew_."

"Like you didn't."

"Continuing our tour," I changed the subject, pulled the door shut and slipped my arm around her again as we limped toward the intersection between two short halls. "On your right, bathroom," I waved at the next few doors. "Closet, other closet, stairs to the basement."

"You mean the dungeon?"

"Right."

"Hm. Let's skip that one," she suggested with a wink. "For now."

"Good call."

"Door Number Three — yours?"

I hesitated, still nervous, but I definitely knew why this time. "It's kind of a mess."

"You don't say." She had to let go of me to push the door open behind her back, took an unsteady half-step away from me so I'd have to catch her, and when I did, we were in my bedroom.

It was dark. The room had been painted some in-between shade of gray or blue or purple, and a stone fireplace took up most of one wall. The only light filtered through wooden blinds on the set of glass doors on the far end of the room, which lead out to a porch covered with lattice and dormant vines beneath the overcast sky.

She tried to turn on the light and nothing happened.

I snapped my fingers and the dozen or so candles on the fireplace mantel all flickered to life at once with a yellow-gold glow not quite bright enough to read by.

"Show-off." Murphy rolled her eyes like she wasn't impressed. "I can do that at my house, too."

"Only because you left all your grandmother's _clap-on_ lights plugged in," I grinned.

"Well, you know what they say about magic and technology—"

"They're both three easy payments of nineteen ninety-five, plus shipping and handling?"

"That would explain a_ lot," _she mused.

I finally had enough space and the money, so I'd bought the biggest, most comfortable bed I could find at the Swedish Meatball furniture store. I wasn't sure what was so special about foam that remembered me, but at least my damn feet didn't hang off the end. There were probably an acre's worth of dark gray sheets on it, tangled from fitful attempts to sleep, with a pale comforter that looked like I had hunted the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man for his hide.

Other than that, the only concessions to decor I had made were an oversized leather chair by the fireplace, the big green military footlocker that I had kept clothes in out on the island, just within reach of the bed, and a wind-up Spiderman alarm clock on top of that, having been unable to find a replacement Mickey Mouse clock.

... And the rows of cold-forged iron nails driven flush into every threshold of the room. The cleaning service couldn't get in, but it was a price I was willing to pay to keep the rest of the Fae _out_, or at least hold them off for a few minutes. Yesterday's clothes were still scattered across the thick, ivory-colored rug in front of the cold hearth.

"I like it. Very cozy."

"You can stay in here if you want. I'll clean it up first." I tried to kick my boxers beneath the bed but only managed to stub the toes of my bullet-holey leg on the frame.

"Looks like there's plenty of room."

Her tone was absolutely, carefully neutral. The look she gave me was _not –_ crystal-blue eyes fixed on me like she was lining up a shot, sharp and sniper-calm. Karrin glanced from me to the blackened overhead light fixture. It had barely lasted one night, Svartalf or not. Then she noticed the open door in the far corner, and gave the massive bathtub a long, lusty stare that had nothing to do with me.

"Oh, _baby."_

"Yeah, I had a feeling you might appreciate that."

The master bathroom and attached closet were about the same size as my first apartment in Chicago, though instead of peeling linoleum and barred windows, it was all white marble and tile, dark wood and leaded glass. There were towels on the floor and a couple of empty beer bottles on the ledge around the tub, which I had tested the night before.

For scientific purposes, obviously. "Plenty of room in there, too."

"If you say so." She looked me over, doubtful but appreciative. Candlelight played gently across her features, it caught and glowed in the ends of her hair that fell loose around her face. Probably would have been a little more romantic if we both hadn't been beaten nearly to death recently, but neither of us were complaining.

Her eyes met mine for a split-second longer than usual; a familiar look, the kind shared when two people have the same idea at exactly the same time.

In an instant I had her face in my hands, tipping her mouth up to mine, as she hauled me down to kiss me like if we both hadn't been mostly bandages she would have tackled me to the floor. We stumbled into each other, impatient and hungry. I knocked her hat off trying to tangle a hand through her hair. Her fingers curled into my flannel shirt, pulling as if her life depended on it, desperate — the result of a week's worth of anticipation for this very second, and better than a decade of pent-up feelings that we still couldn't really act on.

Not yet.

And it was still better than anything I'd felt in longer than I wanted to think about. Even when she pulled away and leaned her forehead against my chest.

"You okay?"

"Dizzy."

"Good dizzy or bad dizzy?" I asked. Murphy laughed softly and pushed me toward the chair by the fireplace. I sat and pulled her into my lap as carefully as I could manage; we were both laughing between breathless kisses. It was a little clumsy and a little awkward, but it didn't feel weird.

None of our close calls and near misses had ever felt _weird_, it had always been good: even if the timing wasn't right, the chemistry was there. We picked up where we had left off, unhurried, like this was how things had been between us all along. But we had never done this before, though, never let it get this far. Never had the opportunity.

I pulled her a little closer, weaving my fingers through her hair again, tracing the curve of her hip. I hadn't planned it, but when she moved, my hand just kind of ended up under her sweatshirt. Mine. Whatever. She shivered, murmuring something sweet, all fever-warm skin and tense muscle, and obviously at some point we were going to run out of road and we'd have to stop, but I could feel that restraint slipping away with every soft sigh and whispered encouragement.

Right up until she swore and caught my wrist. "Christ! _Ow."_

"Shit,_ sorry—"_

"No, that was really..._"_ Karrin wouldn't look at me, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and even in the candlelight I could see the flush across her cheekbones. Seeing her flustered was a rare sight, cute as hell, until I noticed her furrowed brow, her jaw set in pain. "That was...really nice. I just – I have a bruise."

"God, I forgot about that."

"Yeah, me too," she muttered, smiling wryly. "You should see it." She leaned back a bit and hitched up her sweatshirt a little. "It's awful."

It was worse than awful. I could have almost covered the bruise with one hand. Almost. It stretched across the bottom of her ribcage, angry blue-black and red, marked by half a dozen darker welts, over abs like she'd just walked out of a freaking Nike ad. If it wasn't for the Kevlar, she probably would have been dead half a dozen times over, my oxygen-deprived brain realized abruptly.

Incapable of even entertaining the idea, that train of thought jumped the track and for some reason the only other thing I could think of was the wildly convincing dream-memory of her pinned beneath me in bed, asking me to—

"Alright, stop picturing me naked." Karrin shot me a wicked look as she pulled the hem of the hoodie down again, and shifted in my lap to put both feet up on the arm of the chair.

"Too late."

She froze mid-wiggle to look up at me, eyes wide with slightly-reproving, mostly-flattered disbelief. _"Damn_, dude."

"I told you." I shrugged helplessly as she threw her head back and laughed – a bubbly, pleased sound, sweet but mischievous. The way her body tensed against me every time she giggled was something I liked. A lot_._ And I've never been good at _subtle_. "Too late."

"I look like I've been hit by a fucking bus."

"You were gonna look like that when I was done with you, anyway."

"Promises, promises," she grinned. "Just go easy on the goods for now, okay?"

"Okay," I agreed, catching the fingers that toyed with the buttons on my shirt, kissing the back of her hand, all scraped knuckles and IV bruises. "Hey, I don't know if you've seen me lately, but I look pretty rough, too."

"But in an eighties action hero way? Like you've been fighting aliens in Antarctica."

"That bad, huh?"

"Or escaping from New York."

"Are you trying to tell me to get a haircut? Or an eye patch?"

"It's cute."

Her fingertips skimmed along my jaw, across the back of my neck. Karrin had never been one to shy away from physical affection, but in the past few days it was like she had doubled down. Maybe it had been way too long since I'd been touched by someone who wasn't trying to hurt me, or didn't have some ulterior motive. Or maybe I was overthinking it, and she was just trying to make up for only having one working hand. Probably that.

"I think I like the other alien-fighting look, though. You know. With the mud."

"You were wearing more mud than me," I countered.

"I was wearing more _anything_ than you."

"Yeah, well. It's not polite to stare." It was my turn to go all red-faced and sheepish. I had hoped in vain that she had forgotten about that part of the skirmish out on the island, last year. "Also, it was _cold."_

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, not sorry in the slightest. "I got the distinct impression that the cold never bothered you, anyway."

"I'm gonna take that as a compliment, but – and I don't know how many times I have to tell you – the _Frozen_ jokes are just uncalled-for."

She traced the scar on my chin, desperately trying not to smile. "Maybe you should just—"

"Don't you fuckin' _dare,"_ I growled, but that only seemed to encourage her.

"Let it go?"

I sighed deeply and let my head drop back onto the chair, and tried to sound despondent. "I trusted you, Karrin. I thought we were friends."

"Sorry," she whispered, shaking with silent laughter.

"You're not," I warned. "But you will be."

She buried her face in my shoulder and laughed even harder. Murphy definitely knew an empty threat when she heard one. Especially from me.

"So," I said, kissing her forehead. Her hair smelled like vanilla and something floral, the sharp but faint scent of the hospital. I twisted a few loose blonde strands through my fingers. "Six weeks, huh?"

We hadn't really talked about this, aside from earlier in the day when she had grouchily handed me a long and surprisingly specific list of all the activities her surgeon had disallowed for the next month or so.

"Mm-hm."

"That's like, what, forty-ish days?" I asked, swallowing hard. I watched the shadows that flickered across the coffered ceiling, lost in the dizzying sensation of soft lips against my throat, gently staking a claim. "Really taking the whole Lent thing seriously this year, are we?"

I felt her smile. "Just a hilarious coincidence."

"I know we swore never to speak of those dark days again, but I'm expecting this to go about as well as the time you decided to give up coffee."

"And I'm expecting you to be your usual inventive self." There was nothing different in her tone than any of the billion other times we had shamelessly flirted, but god, it _felt_ different when her lips were pressed against my ear, when we were all alone in my bedroom. "So you'd better not let me down."

"Sure, put all the pressure on poor, innocent Harry—"

"Innocent, my ass."

"Even though _he_ wasn't the one who got into a street fight with the Smoking Man and ended up in the ICU—_"_

She sat back and stared at me for a second, and I thought I saw a flicker of anger in her eyes, before she blinked. "I— you're right," Murphy said, frowning. "I knew that cryptkeeping son of a bitch reminded me of _somebody."_

I absolutely lost it, cackling like a madman even though I could feel her glaring at me.

"Hey!" She smacked me on the chest with the back of her hand, indignant. "All of that was entirely your fault."

"In what way?"

Other than the part where I had randomly showed up at her house and dragged her into yet another supernatural shitshow. Or the part where I had given her a magic sword and expected her not to use it in my defense with complete and utter disregard for said magic sword's Holy Terms and Conditions.

Whoops.

"One, you let them catch you—"

"Fair," I agreed.

"And two," she said, narrow-eyed as she poked me with a sharp finger for emphasis. "Like hell was I going to let you die, _again,_ before we got to—"

"Before we got to what?" I asked, with as much mock-naiveté as I could muster.

"To do whatever you were thinking about doing while I was trying to keep your dumb ass from bleeding to death in the middle of the street outside that hotel."

"Um," was all I could say, as I remembered what I'd been thinking about doing while she'd been on her knees on the pavement, and only for a white-hot fraction of a second, but of course she knew. The woman could read me like a freaking billboard.

"In the middle of a shootout, Harry?" She leaned in until her lips brushed mine with every word, soft and tingling. Threatening. "_Really."_

"My bad?"

I reached for her face but she caught my hand, turning to press a kiss against the circle of unscarred flesh on my palm where Lasciel's mark had been. It felt like touching a live wire, a jolt through every nerve.

"Your timing is definitely bad."

"I can work on that," I said reasonably, as my heart hammered out a Van Halen drum solo that probably could have been heard six blocks away. "I'm actually free right now, if you—"

Whatever I meant to say dissolved into a helpless sound as she shoved me back into the chair. It was an indescribably, agonizingly good kiss – the soft, insistent warmth of her mouth, the taste of her, the way she pressed against me, as close as we could get. Enjoying it just as much as I was. And just as good was the endlessly satisfying knowledge that I didn't have to waste another second trying to convince myself that the way she smiled and laughed and said my name didn't flip every goddamn switch I had.

There was something else, too – a merciless awareness of _everything_; every breath, every tremble of her spine beneath my fingertips as I slipped one hand under her sweatshirt again, every silken strand of hair in my fist as I pulled her head back and pressed my mouth against the labored, anodyne lull of her pulse. Every touch was a little more frantic, a little less gentle.

"God, I just want to—"

"We can't." I could hear myself saying it, but when had I ever taken my own advice? Definitely not right now.

"But we _could—"_ she argued. Her hand slipped down my chest, drifting toward my belt. "We could just…"

I could think of a hundred thousand things that _we could just_ and god, it was so tempting. It had been easier to say no to a freaking succubus. I didn't want to tell her no. I almost couldn't.

"Karrin, _please."_ I grabbed her wrist. She was shivering a little, her lips tinged faintly blue, and I hadn't even realized how cold the room had grown. "Maybe... maybe this isn't such a good idea, after all."

"Your idea."

"Yeah, I'm not exactly known for good ideas? If I was, we wouldn't be in this mess—"

She silenced me with a finger against my lips, shaking her head. She didn't have to say anything – I already knew she didn't blame me for any of the shit she'd been through while working with me, and she already knew I'd feel guilty about it for eternity, regardless.

"Oh, this is definitely your fault, Dresden," she said sharply. "But what I mean is how you — you talked a really big game on Halloween, and then I didn't see you again for _weeks." _

We had spoken about getting together then, months ago, which had been an awkward conversation even before I had threatened her with violent, bed-breaking marathon sex.

... And hadn't followed through. Another empty threat.

"Oh."

I had thought about it, though. At length, and in excruciating detail, and apparently wasn't alone in that regard. She continued, the graze of her fingertips against my cheek completely at odds with the heat behind her words.

"And then you just... you show up out of nowhere and pretend like that conversation never even happened, and you want my help even though it's impossible to focus when you — when you told me what you wanted, and you keep looking at me like that, but you still won't do anything about it," she whispered, mid-kiss.

It had been literal _years_ since I had been with a woman who wanted me, for real, without some sort of power play or Faustian bargain or mental manipulation involved. I had almost forgotten how it felt. Her teeth closed on my lower lip, so gently, and it was all I could do not to melt through the fucking floor.

"When you're sleeping in my bed all alone, nearly naked, dreaming about god knows who—"

"_You_," I managed, weakly. "So, y'know. Still your fault."

Karrin leaned her forehead against my shoulder and sighed, equal parts mournful and annoyed. I wrapped my arms around her as tight as I dared and we stayed like that for I don't know how long. I don't think either of us wanted to leave.

"So," I said after a moment, breaking the dark, cozy silence. "Six weeks, huh?"

"_Asshole."_ She smacked me on the chest again with an exasperated, affectionate laugh. "You're lucky you—"

We both jumped at the sudden crash of thunder overhead, rattling the glass doors in their frames. Icy rain pattered hesitantly against the stone steps outside.

"Oh, shit. The _groceries."_ I had completely forgotten, but Murphy hadn't. She tugged on my shirt, nodding toward the hallway. "We should—"

"Yeah, just, uh." I cleared my throat. "Give me a second."

"Oh," she said, snickering. "Right."

"That's… not helping."

"Sorry," she whispered, still not sorry. "Hey, Harry."

"Hey _what,"_ I said, unamused – even in just two words I could hear her poorly-hidden grin.

"Do you remember that time I was helping you change a tire on the Beetle, and your ninety year-old landlady came out in her leopard-print kimono to get her paper—"

"I do _now,"_ I grimaced. Leave it to Karrin to have as much fun knocking the metaphorical wind out of my metaphorical sails as she'd had putting it there. "Thanks for that, Captain Buzzkill."

"It's _Major_ Buzzkill, and you're welcome."

"Wow. Moving up the ranks."

"Yeah, I got the promotion for interrupting this guy's sex dream," she said, deadpan. "But then I was dishonorably discharged for enjoying it too much."

I sighed, defeated. She lived to give me hell. "You're not going to make this easy on me, are you?"

"No, I plan on making it _very—"_

"Nope." The room went abruptly dark as I waved a hand, and extinguished the candles. I picked her up again, heading out of the bedroom, back down the hall.

"Difficult! I was going to say difficult_—_" she yelped, giggling. "You set that one up yourself. Now put me down—"

_"You're_ difficult," I grumbled as I set her on the sofa. "Stay there."

"I can help," Murphy protested.

We stared at each other. I held a hand out, silently gesturing at the knee brace.

"I can help _some_," she amended in a hopeful tone.

"No."

I grabbed a blanket from the nearest moving box and threw it over her. She flipped the blanket down from her face and glared at me. _No _was a word we didn't say to each other much, and I had the feeling I was going to be saying it a lot more often. I put on my coat, watching her try to decide whether or not to push the issue.

"I'm serious. If you need something, yell. Otherwise, stay there."

"But—"

"I swear to god," I whispered as I leaned down and caught her beautiful, bruised face in both hands and kissed her gently on the forehead. "I'll put your sweet ass right back in that truck and drive you straight to your mom's."

Finally, a threat she took seriously. Karrin stared up at me, blue eyes blazing, her cheeks still flushed from our previous fun, her hair all disheveled – it was a good look.

"You _wouldn't." _

There was a note of doubt in her voice, so slight I'm not sure anyone else would have heard it.

I grabbed the keys from the coffee table and brandished them like a weapon.

"You're being so mean," she said, affronted but interested. One golden brow climbed dangerously. "Do it _more_."

"Take a nap or something," I said, red-faced as I headed for the door to rescue the groceries from the bed of the loaner truck. The rain started to pick up as I began unloading damp cardboard boxes and shopping bags. By my third or fourth trip, she was asleep, her free arm across her eyes, the cat curled up against her hip.

Mister cracked an eye open at me as I carried in an armful of firewood and set it to blazing in the living room fireplace. Murphy muttered in her sleep, and the big cat just purred louder until she fell quiet.

"Well," I sighed. "At least she respects _your_ authority."

* * *

stay safe, friends


	4. our four-letter word

_**May Contain: **_Some _Spiderverse_._ Kill Bill, The Boondock Saints, The Addams Family (1991), _Achievement Unlocked: Dorky Dad. Ruthlessly dragging each other as a love language.

_**Definitely Contains:**_ adult language/themes, mentions of suicide. Harry, trying to have a serious conversation, and then having an epiphany. Me, trying to get Maggie's character voice right. I love the Zoo Day story in _Brief Cases_ but haven't been able to read it without crying since my dog passed away. I get three paragraphs in and the waterworks start.

This is pure, unabashed, highly-unlikely fluff. Set right after ch3. Hope you guys are still hanging in there.

* * *

I was stacking the rest of the firewood on the porch when I heard small feet and big paws on the wet sidewalk, a few houses down. I sat on the steps and waited for the dark-haired, dark-eyed little girl in a school uniform and a too-big blue raincoat that only made her look tinier by comparison.

She had the hood pulled up against the drizzle, a backpack slung over one shoulder and she clutched a cellphone, thumbs flying across the glowing screen as she walked. A massive grey-black dog in a bright service harness walked beside her with a happy, squinty doggy grin. I waved at him and his tail wagged even harder.

She shoved the phone in a pocket and hurried up the brick path, glittery red Chuck Taylors splashing in puddles.

"Hey, kiddo."

"Dad," Maggie said with a big smile as she looked up and saw me. "You're home—"

It was just heart-meltingly cute. I couldn't _not_ pick her up and hug her—

"And you're squishing me," she continued in a breathless, squeaky croak.

"How was school?" I let go, and she sat next to me on the steps. Maggie made a face as she pushed down the hood of her raincoat. She tucked her hair behind her ears and put her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands.

_"Boring,"_ she intoned with a serious sigh, slumped shoulders, an eye-roll worthy of a professional. Mouse nosed his way under my hand. "Even he thinks so."

I gave the big dog's ears a scratch. "Surely it wasn't that bad."

"We had test practice _all morning. _And indoor recess,_"_ she said, as if she considered it a personal insult. "And then an assembly about bullying."

"That sounds like it really sucked," I commiserated, before I realized what I'd said and to who.

"... Can I say that?"

"Uh," I hesitated, trying not to give away that I had no freaking clue what I was doing. "Well. Only when you're with me, okay? Definitely not at the Carpenters'. And not at school," I added, since she attended the same Catholic school as the rest of the Carpenter kids, and I couldn't imagine even mild swearing being allowed there, either.

"It really sucked," Maggie grumbled experimentally, and then shot me a sideways look.

I nodded my approval, trying not to laugh. "Feel better?"

"Yeah. A little."

"I'm sorry it really sucked."

"That's alright." She huffed another breath, making the blunt-cut bangs across her forehead fly. "It usually does."

"Well, I think I know something that might help—"

"More swears," the girl suggested with a hopeful smile.

Oh, we were _definitely_ related. I shook my head. "A surprise."

"What kind of surprise?"

"The… surprising kind?" I said lamely, with an enigmatic and wizardly wiggle of my fingers.

Her brow furrowed doubtfully, lips in a tight line.

"Well, I think it's a pretty good one." I shrugged. "But it's inside, so we'll have to be kind of quiet. I told you my friend Karrin is out of the hospital today, right? She's here, but she's asleep. You remember her, don't you?"

"Yeah. She was with you when you got me, I remember."

My daughter looked up at me, solemn and stoic, looking much older for a moment, then much younger, and _god,_ I wished she didn't have to remember any of that. We had talked about it, just a little, and even that had made her go pale and trembly, and she had nervously defaulted the conversation back to our favorite Star Wars characters.

Hell, I wish I didn't remember any of it, either.

"She's my friend, too," Maggie continued matter-of-factly, as I wallowed blindly into a swamp of self-pity.

"Oh." I blinked. "I didn't know that."

"Yeah. Murphy always has really good stories about you. They're kind of scarier than Molly's stories, though. And she got me a bow for Christmas, a _real one—"_

"A — a_ what?"_

"A bow. Like from _Brave?"_

"From what?"

"Like Katniss."

"Who?"

"Like _Robin Hood_," Maggie said with a hint of exasperation as she got out her phone, clicked at it a few times and held it up.

"Oh." I stared bewilderedly at a short, silent video of two slight figures all bundled up in the winter wonderland of the Carpenters' backyard. They took turns shooting at a _Calvin and Hobbes-_style snowman with an apple on top of his head. One was clearly Karrin; blonde hair bright against her dark coat, loosing an arrow that hit the unsuspecting snowman right between his button eyes.

Maggie's face was barely visible, she was all puffy yellow parka, purple scarf and fuzzy earmuffs, wrestling with a recurve bow nearly as tall as she was. The girl took a shot and it hit center mass, they high-fived, and the video looped.

The next picture was of them posed like a hunting photo with their icy prey, both grinning and pink-cheeked from the cold under a colorful, wintry sunset. Maggie was pointing excitedly at the half-dozen arrows lodged in the snowman's guts. Murphy held an arrow with the apple impaled on it, a bite taken out of it.

It was ridiculously cute, in a way that felt like being kicked in the stomach a few times.

I had asked her to make sure my daughter disappeared into the Church's version of witness protection, though looking back, I knew it was something Murph would never have done even if I had actually died. What she did instead was what I should have done all along.

"It's really fun but I'm not very good yet." Maggie glanced up at me as the screen flickered. She put the phone back in her pocket. We'd already had the conversation about magic-versus-technology, and the disappointment on her face had been, as Molly had put it, the biggest of moods. "I need to practice more."

"We can get a target for the backyard if you want."

"Really?"

"Absolutely. We can go tomorrow after school. But right now," I picked her up and set her on her feet as I stood. "Let's go inside where it's warm."

"For a surprise," she said, skeptically.

"Yep."

Mouse wiggled past us into the house as I opened the door, and bounded up to Mister in a happy _I missed you! _dance, his tail thumped violently against the coffee table. Mister twitched an affectionate ear and patiently tolerated being sniffed, but didn't move from his post – still curled up next to Karrin. The big dog turned in a few circles, graceful for his size, and dutifully plopped down between the sofa and the front door. Murph slept through all of it, her arm over her eyes, the blanket pulled up to her chin, but then, she could sleep through a damned apocalypse _without_ pharmaceutical assistance.

It was tough to resist the urge to draw a magic marker mustache on her face.

I shook the rain from my coat and hung it up by the front door, and did the same with Maggie's coat and backpack.

"This way," I said, and she put her little hand in mine. We had taken a tour of the place with Molly and then again with Charity almost a week ago, and I'm sure they would have loved to have seen her reaction, but Molly had already gone back to doing Winter Lady stuff.

And I had the feeling Charity would get it. I kind of wanted to do this on my own. I only hesitated for a second before I pushed the door open. What if she didn't like it?

Too late now.

"Okay, tell me what you think."

Maggie frowned as she glanced around the room, dark brows knit seriously beneath her hair, lips pursed. For a moment she looked so much like her mother, I could barely breathe.

"Well. It's kinda girly. You're too tall for the furniture. And you're too old for Legos—_"_

And then she started toward the desk and picked up the Nintendo box that had a yellow ribbon and a sticky note with her name on it, she held it out like she had found a holy relic.

"Too old for Legos!" I snorted as I sat down on the fuzzy silver rug next to the bed. "I'm _not_ too old for Legos—"

"Is this for me?"

I nodded. She put the present down on the desk again, unsure.

"All of this is for me?" she asked again, and the hint of nervous disbelief in her voice was like a knife in the heart; she sounded as apprehensive as I felt.

"All yours."

Apprehensive _and_ guilty that she also knew how it felt to have genuinely nice things happen so rarely that you can't take it at face value when they do — and when they finally do, you can't trust it, always looking for the catch. How many months had I spent doubting every word Ebenezer said to me, waiting for the other shoe to drop, because why would someone want to take in such a fuck-up?

Maggie looked up at me, tense and stock-still, trying hard to keep the anxiety from her face. "You want me to stay here with you."

"Only if you want to."

She nodded, seemed to relax, moving between the furniture and looking at everything, touching everything like she was trying to memorize it. Like any second it could all disappear. She reached for one of the lightsabers on the dresser, then stopped and turned to me.

"What if you have to leave?"

"That could happen." It would have felt better to tell her that I'd never leave her again, but I couldn't do it. Lying to the people I cared about in order to keep them safe and make myself feel better had always come back around to bite me. Sometimes literally. "I talked about it with Charity and Michael, they said it would be okay for you to stay with them whenever you need to."

"What if…" Maggie picked up the stuffed Chewbacca from the window seat and hugged it close as she sat on the floor across from me. "What if you have to leave, and you don't come back," she whispered, and Chewy let out a mournful howl.

"That could happen, too. Here," I held out my hand and she took it, and I pulled her into the space under my arm. The last thing I wanted to do was frighten her, but that ship had fucking sailed, hadn't it? "It's smart to plan ahead, you know, just in case. But that's something you should let me worry about, that's _my _job. And no matter what happens to me, you'll be okay."

"How do you know? If you're not here, you won't know."

"I just know. You'll have to trust me on that one." I pulled her a little closer and kissed the top of her head. "I've got one more surprise, if you want it."

"Alright."

I held my hand out in front of her, a silver chain and pendant dangling from my fingers, out of nowhere. It wasn't magic, just a little sleight of hand; I had been wearing it around my wrist since I picked it up from the shop that morning.

"It's just like yours," she said, reaching out to take it.

It was _almost_ just like the one I wore – a pentacle, a silver star in a closed circle, just a bit smaller and of more delicate craftsmanship. I'd had it custom made, the first thing I'd bought after Thomas helped me liquidate some of the loot I'd scored while plundering the underworld. It wasn't all beat up like mine, and didn't have a red stone set in the center.

Not yet, anyway. I had been working on a way to copy my mother's legacy, her recorded notes on routes through the Ways, and some of my own - notes, memories, what might have counted for advice if it had been from someone older and wiser. It was impossible to know whether or not Maggie would have any talent for magic at all, but I wanted to be prepared.

Just in case.

She smiled as she pulled the chain on over her head and I straightened it out, untangled it from her hair and fixed the collar of her school uniform.

"Looks good on you, kid," was all I could manage to say.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

… So maybe I was _hoping_, just a little. So sue me.

"I have to show Molly," Maggie said, excited now, all talk of leaving and being left forgotten as she snapped a picture of both of us with her phone. It was a tad blurry, but there was an obvious resemblance in the matching goofy grins. "I haven't seen her in a while, she said she has a new job." The girl rapidly typed something up that had about twelve exclamation points and a whole string of various smiley faces. "I miss her."

"So do I."

"We were supposed to go to the zoo, when it's nice out again. We tried to go once but it was too busy."

"She told me." Of anyone, Molly would be the person to recognize it; the girl's fear of big crowds and loud, sudden noises, tense situations. I had a feeling she wasn't too fond of surprises, but so far, so good. "We can go, if you want. Maybe next week, if it's nice."

"That would be cool."

"What else do you want to do? We could go to the aquarium, or the museum, or a baseball game—"

"I like baseball." She ran a hand along the spines of the books on the shelf next to her, distractedly pulled out a few. "I saw the cops play the firefighters last year."

"With Murph?"

"And Mister Butters," she nodded, flipping through the pages of _The Girl Who Owned a City._

"They go every year. She used to play, one time she made _me_ play, did she tell you that?"

Maggie shook her head, giggling at the thought, which was the only appropriate reaction.

"What else do you guys do?" I asked, desperately curious, because Karrin hadn't told me anything; we had been too busy trying not to die.

"We go visit Mrs. Borden and the baby sometimes. Um. On my birthday we went to the indoor go-kart place. That was pretty cool. Sometimes we go to the movies." She put the books neatly back on the shelf beneath the seat. "We went to see _Rogue One_ but that was too sad, so we left and went to the arcade instead—" her smile evaporated as she looked up at me. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing at all." I was just blinking really hard, no reason. Dust or something. Certainly wasn't about to cry like a little baby because I didn't know whether to feel grateful or jealous or just plain sad, and all three at once were too overwhelming. "What's your favorite game?"

"_Aliens: Armageddon._ Me and Murphy made it to number three on the leaderboard." She ventured another glance at me, like she was letting me in on a secret. "But we're not supposed to tell Mrs. Carpenter, because it isn't _Rated E for Everyone."_

One of these days, I'd have to tell her about the time I saw Mrs. Carpenter put a ferocious beatdown on some faerie sons of bitches with an actual freaking war hammer - talk about not being _rated E for everyone._

"I won't tell her if you won't."

"Tell her _what?"_ Maggie asked seriously, and then she grinned and I don't think I had been more proud of anything, ever, in my whole entire life.

"Well, you'll have to tell Charity _thank you_, because she helped me put all of this together. We didn't leave anything out, did we? Is there anything else you need or want? Anything at all."

"A bed for Mouse," she answered after a moment.

"Oh, damn — I mean, darn," I corrected myself too late. "I mean, I knew I was forgetting something important. We can do that tomorrow, too."

"Dad," she said, in chiding, flustered tones, like she wasn't quite sure how to tell me without hurting my feelings. "You don't have to buy me stuff—"

"I know that." I reached for a box of Legos. "These are for _me. _What do you say?" I rattled the box of bricks temptingly. "We could build our own dinosaur theme park, terrorize some guests, maybe eat some unethical scientists?"

"I—" Maggie smiled hesitantly, then sighed the resigned sigh of a child who had been her own parent for a long time. "I need to do my homework first."

"That's alright. Do you want some help?"

She nodded.

"Okay, you get your homework, I'll meet you in the kitchen."

She threw her arms around my neck as she stood, me _and_ poor little stuffed Chewbacca, still in a headlock – it let out another yodeling growl.

"Love you, Dad."

"I know it." I felt her smile, her cheek against mine before she turned and left. "Love you, too."

I sat with my face in my hands for a moment, then wiped at my eyes, took a deep breath, got my shit together and followed her.

We spent the next few hours parked at the kitchen table, with a few mugs of marshmallow cocoa each and about ten times the amount of homework I'd had at that age, and that was just the stuff that wasn't online. We made it through a couple pages of reading and vocabulary, some Earth Science, and had started in on math when Mouse padded into the kitchen.

He nosed at my elbow with a soft _boof _that a dog so big shouldn't be able to make, trying to get my attention.

"I'll be right back."

Maggie nodded, her head bent over the sheet of geometry word problems as she tapped the eraser of her pencil against the tip of her nose.

I followed Mouse into the living room, where Karrin was awake and sitting up, blearily rubbing her eyes.

"Hey."

"Hey." I sat down on the edge of the sofa and reached for her hand. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I could _Riverdance_— is that my hat?"

"I dunno." It was entirely possible that I had borrowed her Cubs cap to keep the rain off while bringing in groceries, and entirely possible that I was still wearing it backward. "Is that _my_ sweatshirt?"

"Not anymore," she grumbled, though her tone softened as I wrapped both arms around her. "Harry. You're squishing me."

"He just keeps doing that," said a small voice behind me.

I could feel Murphy laughing weakly as she pushed me away.

"What's up, danger?"

"Homework," Maggie answered, worried as she eyed the shoulder brace, the bruises. "Lots of homework."

"_Fun."_ Murph waved the girl over and pulled her into a one-armed hug. "Is your old man helping you or just slowing you down?"

"He's pretty good at math. And book reports."

"Naturally. He is kind of a big giant nerd."

I couldn't really argue with that one.

"Did you bring the stuff?"

"Oh, right! Yeah, I brought it." Maggie turned on her heel and strode purposefully back into the kitchen.

"What stuff—" I asked, but as soon as the girl was gone, she was rubbing at her temples, pale and drawn, and she leaned into my hand when I touched her face. "Tell me what you need."

"Water. Some ice for this," Murphy gestured vaguely at her shoulder. "And my wallet."

"Wallet?"

"Just—" she shooed me toward the kitchen, where I found Maggie digging in her backpack.

"Did you finish that geometry without me? Hey, _what are_ _those—" _I pointed at the green box of chocolate and mint cookies she clutched as we passed each other. "Whoa, whoa, whoa." I grabbed a bottle of water, a towel, one of the ice packs from the stuff the hospital had sent. "I didn't know we were in the cookie-dealing business. That's the kind of thing you've got to let me in on."

She just grinned, and I followed her into the living room and got out my own wallet.

"Oh, boy," I heard Murphy whisper to herself. "Here we go."

"I want you to bring me all of the peanut butter ones this will get me."

"All?" The girl looked at the bill I held out, her lips moved as she counted. "That's twenty-five boxes."

"Twenty-four, counting those." I nodded at the box she set on the coffee table. I loosened the lid on the water bottle and set it down.

"The chocolate covered ones, or the regular ones?" she asked, business-like.

"A dozen of each."

"… Deal," said Maggie, and we shook on it, and she practically skipped back into the kitchen, waving the hundred dollar bill like a victory flag.

Murphy shot me a look as I sat down next to her.

"What's so funny?"

"That's a lot of cookies." She reached up and took her hat off my head, settling it down backwards over her adorably disastrous hair. "Are you switching currency from pizza to Tagalongs? You're not worried that's going to crash Tiny Faerie Wall Street or whatever?"

"Obviously pepperoni is still the gold standard, but it never hurts to diversify."

"A little bit of money in your pocket and you go all Pacman Jones." Karrin produced an orange prescription bottle from the pocket of my stolen sweatshirt, popped the lid off with her thumb, downed a pill and took a long drink. "So do all the Fae eat like high school burnouts, or did they learn that from watching you, Dad?"

"_Rude_," I said, very aware of how red my face had gone, and I tried to change the subject. I held out the ice pack. "This is kind of melted, do you want me to put it in the freezer for a minute?"

Karrin stared levelly at me, expectant.

"Oh. Oh, _right_._"_ I shook my head, going even redder. "Never mind."

It took a little bit of concentration to refreeze the ice myself without fragging the entire room with silica gel and blue dye – working on such a small scale always took more mental effort. The plastic surface frosted over in tiny fractals, a whisper of steam.

"I knew if I kept you around long enough, eventually you'd be good for something_."_

"I'll show you _good for something—" _ I started, interrupted by a reverent gasp behind me, and over my shoulder I saw wide, dark eyes looking up at me in awe.

"Just like _Elsa_."

I was already glaring when I turned back to Murph, but it was too late. She howled with pained laughter, holding the towel-wrapped ice to her shoulder.

"Strike two," I threatened emptily. "One more and I'm shipping you off to your mom's, where you can spend the next six weeks drinking terrible instant coffee and watching twenty-four-hour news and holding her yarn while she knits."

"_Like Elsa,"_ Murphy wheezed and laughed even harder, and then Maggie was laughing too, although unsurely, like she didn't quite get the joke.

"Come on, boy," I said to Mouse, who watched the exchange from a warm spot by the fireplace. "Looks like we're outnumbered."

Well, maybe not outnumbered, but clearly outmatched. The dog followed me to the kitchen, where I put some leftover chicken in two bowls on the floor. Mister trotted in a moment later, sensing that it was dinnertime through the Force, or however cats did it.

When I peered around the corner, the two were sitting together, talking softly. Their conversation was more comfortable than any of ours had been – like they knew each other a little better. Maggie was showing off the silver pendant around her neck, all proud smiles, and Karrin was nodding in admiration.

I could have hauled back the entire immeasurably-priceless contents of Hades' vault a hundred times over and it wouldn't have been enough to repay her for not doing what I'd asked her to do. And I could've kicked myself for that slight twinge of jealousy. It was my own damn fault, the consequences of my own actions, it wasn't as if I could go to the stupid arcade, anyway, and she would _always _know the girl better by virtue of what they had in common. Her father had killed himself, too, hadn't he? And had managed to do a much more permanent job of it than I had.

Mister shoulder-checked my shins, and I threw him a few more pieces of chicken. When I glanced around the corner again, they were sitting closer, looking at something on a phone screen and whispering.

"This one. _No_," Maggie pointed. "This one."

"What about that one?"

The girl shook her head. "Too fancy."

"This one?"

"_Way_ too fancy. That one."

"Yeah, that's the one," Karrin agreed, and they exchanged a conspiratory grin. "You think?"

"I think so—oh, _shh_. He's back."

I walked into the room to a chorus of suspicious snickering.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing," Murphy said quickly. "Girl stuff. Mind your business."

"Yeah," Maggie echoed daringly. "Mind your business."

"I was just going to ask what you guys want for dinner." Mouse sat next to me and raised a paw, having heard one of his favorite words. "You had yours."

He tilted his head and blinked, clearly translating as '_what about second dinner?'_

"Anything, as long as it isn't from a hospital cafeteria."

"Or a school cafeteria."

"I can cook something," I offered, and both stared up at me for a second before looking at each other in horror. "... Or not."

Half an hour later we were all sitting around a coffee table covered in takeout containers. I had claimed a spot on the floor between Karrin, who had kept her post on the couch by the fire, and Maggie, at the opposite side of the table, using chopsticks like a pro. Every so often the girl would throw Mouse a piece of beef or broccoli – a dangerous digestive game with that dog, but they were enjoying themselves so much I didn't have the heart to tell her to stop.

"Trade me," Murphy handed me an open carton. "This is yours."

"Is it? I thought this had an awful lot of shrimp in it for steak fried rice."

She narrowed her eyes as we swapped. "Did you take my eggroll, too?"

"No?" was my answer, muffled, as I ate it in two bites.

"The ultimate betrayal," she whispered, going for the last one in the styrofoam box.

I pulled it out of reach. "You wanna arm-wrestle for it?"

"_Roshambo,_" she suggested, and we played_ rock-paper-scissors_ for the last eggroll.

I lost, as usual. "Best two out of three?"

"In your deep-fried dreams," she said with a grin, as I noticed how intently we were being watched from the opposite side of the table. The girl turned back to her dinner with a bemused snort, a shake of her head.

"What's so funny?"

Maggie looked up at me, unconvinced. "Do you guys _really _fight monsters? Like the tree monster at the grocery store, that was real?"

"Yeah?" I said, my voice climbing in question as Karrin and I exchanged a look. "There was a ghoul and an ogre, too. And a plant monster—"

"Which your dad hit with his car."

"Only after you went all _Army of Darkness _on it—"

"And what about the Billy Goats Gruff?" she asked, mid-bite. "Them too, right?"

"All three of 'em. Well, I fought the first one—"

"_Got his butt kicked_ by the first one," Karrin interrupted in a stage-whisper.

"Well, you yelled at the second one until he cried."

"I don't remember any crying," she mused.

"I remember a lot of yelling—"

"Do you really have a faerie godmother?" Maggie had dropped a piece of broccoli, and Mouse was trying to sneak it off the edge of the table. "Can _I_ have a faerie godmother?"

"Yeah. I mean, I do. But she's… well, she's not very nice, and—"

"And do you _really_ know Santa Claus? Harry Carpenter said he's not real and it's just some old guy who works at the outlet mall and takes his smoke breaks behind the Starbucks."

"He's real. I've met him—" I choked down a laugh as Murphy mouthed the words _'Santa Claus Smackdown!'_ at me from behind her can of Diet Coke.

"...is _he_ nice?"

"He, um – he seems pretty cool."

"And he _doesn't_ work at the outlet mall?"

"Not at the outlet mall, no." I shook my head.

Karrin shot me a sideways glance. She had been infinitely amused to find out that she had been working with some of the big, tattooed _berserkergang_ elves from Santa's day job. Less amused when I made the observation that she was the tiniest and most cheerful among them.

Maggie continued her interrogation, leaning towards us with her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, enthralled. Mouse had claimed the abandoned carton of beef and broccoli as salvage and was lost in the actual sauce.

"Did you really rescue a bunch of princesses from monsters and stuff?"

"Princesses? I don't remember there being any—"

"One with the troll on the bridge, right?" the girl asked eagerly.

Murphy cleared her throat very subtly and shot me a _just go with it_ look, a reassuring nod.

It was fairly obvious that a short blonde somebody had Disneyfied some of our grim adventures into something a tad more age-appropriate. And of course I remembered – I had been trying to find a girl who had run away from her affluent parents, until said parents changed their minds about what had happened, claimed it was an abduction and tried to pin it on me. Which had been one hell of a dick move on their part.

… It had turned out alright for me, though.

"Of course. How could I forget the night we met?" I said, in my best Raul Julia impression. "An evening much like this. Magic in the air. An itty bitty cop—"

"Some weirdo in a cowboy coat, loitering on the North Avenue Bridge."

"You thought I was a kidnapper. You wanted to arrest me."

"To be fair," Murphy shrugged, blue eyes sparkling. "That _was_ your description in the APB."

"And one from a castle made of ice." Maggie continued, counting on her fingers, seemingly oblivious to the two of us staring at each other, grinning like idiots. "And another from a scary island. And one from evil faeries at her wedding, and one from a nightmare monster, like Freddy—"

Molly, then, and Ivy, Georgia, and—

"How do you know about _Freddy?" _I heard myself ask, in a tone I didn't know I was capable of making.

"He's not _real_, he's from the movies," Maggie argued.

"Movies you aren't nearly old enough to watch," I said, as if I was an authority on the matter, or had any room to talk at all, and l shot a desperate look at Murphy.

_Help_.

But Karrin was very pointedly not looking at me, and my daughter fixed me with a self-assured stare, dark eyes narrowed imperiously:

"I've read scarier _Goosebumps _books."

I sat there with my mouth hanging open for a second, not sure what to say. Murphy studied the contents of her can of Diet Coke intently, fighting a smile. She would go all Black Mamba on a fallen angel, but there was no way she was getting in the middle of this one.

Talk about picking your battles.

"Alright." I raised both hands in defeat, stood and gathered the half empty containers to stash in the fridge and paused on the way back through the living room, scanning the shelves. "I've got a much better story about rescuing a princess, if you want to hear it."

I found what I was looking for on one of the bookshelves by the fireplace, picked Maggie up in one arm, flopped down on the other end of the sofa and put my feet up.

"Better not be a kissing book," said Murphy.

"Oh, it is."

"Like _Cosmo,"_ Maggie suggested.

I choked on a laugh. Molly Carpenter had some 'splainin to do. "Mm, not exactly."

I read for a while, but only the good parts, and every so often Murphy would quote a line along with me. I had barely made it to _"She never did,"_ when I realized that everyone was asleep but me. Karrin was out again, snoring softly with the cat curled up in her lap. Mouse was dozing by the fire, which had burned down to coals. Maggie was snuggled up under my arm, and stirred when I moved.

"It's kinda late, kiddo. Do you want me to take you back to the Carpenters'?" I asked her as she woke. "Your room is all ready if you want to stay."

"Well," she hesitated like she was trying to spare my feelings again. "I have school, and I didn't bring another uniform or any of my stuff—"

"Oh, crap. I forgot about school. We'd better go."

I gathered up her homework and her backpack and her coat and Mouse, and we started out into the dark. It was colder now than it had been earlier, but the sky had cleared to high, thin clouds shot through with moonlight.

"So," I asked as she grabbed my hand, taking three steps to my one. "Was that an okay surprise?"

"Yeah."

"Not _too _terrible?" I ventured.

"Pretty good."

"So what the heck was all that giggling about earlier?"

"Can't tell you." I could hear the grin in her voice. "It's a surprise."

"Oh, I see how it is." I scooped her up in one arm as I walked. "I figured you and Molly for being in cahoots, but Murphy, too? I should have known."

"Is she your girlfriend?"

I stopped dead in my tracks. I had been attempting to mentally prepare myself for all kinds of difficult conversations with my daughter, but I hadn't even considered _this one_, and for some reason my heart was pounding faster now than it had while facing down Outsiders.

"I — what makes you say that?"

"I dunno," she mumbled into my shoulder. "You smile a lot when she's talking."

"I do?"

"Yeah."

"Well. I don't know. She and I… well, we haven't really talked about that."

"Grownups have to talk about _everything."_

"I'll let you know as soon as I know, how does that sound?"

"Okay, I guess," she agreed, yawning as she lay her head against me, and I started walking again.

It was a little more than a block and half to the Carpenter's place. There were still a few lights on in the windows. I let myself in the front gate and almost before I even knocked, Charity answered the door.

"Harry." She spoke quietly, everyone in the house was asleep and so was Maggie, out like a light. "I thought it might be you. She didn't want to stay?"

"Not yet."

She nodded sympathetically. "Did she like it?"

"I think so." I let her take the sleeping girl from my arms. "Thanks again for all the help."

"How's Karrin?" Charity held her as easily as I had, as carefully as one of her own.

"Stubborn and cranky, but mostly unconscious."

"I'd be more worried if she wasn't," she said with a sudden smile. "Wait there. I'll be right back."

She disappeared into the darkened living room, and a moment later I heard her feet on the stairs. Mouse nosed my hand. I dropped to a knee and hugged him as hard as I could. Mouse didn't mind getting a little squished. He licked my face – a slobbery doggy smooch, and stayed on the porch with me until Charity returned a few moments later.

She was carrying an ugly old orange rotary-dial phone, and put it in my hands.

"I found this at a yard sale this morning, I thought you could use it. I tried it and it still works, it's just a little—"

I had my doubts that Charity Carpenter would ever like me as a person, but she never failed to live up to her name. There was something in her expression that was almost bordering on clemency. Like she might be able to tolerate me being her neighbor, eventually, give or take a couple hundred years.

It was dark. It was hard to tell.

"It's_ perfect_. I've been trying to find one of these all week."

"One more thing. We're having dinner and a movie, Sunday night. Michael's making burgers." She said it like she was giving me an order instead of an invitation, which was unsurprising – the woman was general of an army she had made herself. "I already invited Mister Butters and his girlfriend, they're bringing the potato chips, you and Karrin are bringing the ice cream."

"Okay?" I agreed, as if I had any choice in the matter at all.

"And Harry," she said, a little more gently as she put a hand on my arm when I turned to leave. "Just be patient with her. Children need that, regardless, but… just keep in mind, it might take some time."

"I've got plenty of that."

The walk back alone felt like it took a lot longer. The living room was empty, dark except for the embers in the fireplace. I left the old phone on the kitchen counter. The bedroom was dark and empty, too, but the bathroom door was open a little, the light was on and I could hear quiet but emphatic swearing.

I peered into the room, which was still steamed-up from the shower and it smelled like my soap.

"Son of a bitch. _Ow_."

Murphy sat in the middle of the tile floor with a rolled up towel under one knee, wearing one of my shirts and not much else. It was only half buttoned, the sleeves were too long and it fell well below her hips, but that was more of her than I had seen since we got stuck in that vampire basement with a claymore mine and her ex.

She tended to dress for function over aesthetic, and had told me a long time ago that exposed cleavage and hot brass casings are a mistake you only make once. It was hard to tell with all the jeans and flannel, but there wasn't an inch or ounce more of her than was absolutely necessary, all graceful, dangerous muscle, and she had earned every bit of it the hard way. Even sitting still she looked like she was only a breath away from moving. Like a tiny, deadly ballerina who could kick my ass into next week, which was just all manner of hot. And she really would kick my ass if I said that out loud.

Her left leg was a swollen mess of bruises and half a dozen small cuts, some stitched shut, where the surgeon had reassembled her knee. Her hair was damp and tangled wildly around her face, still a little flushed from the shower, and she gritted her teeth as she held an antiseptic wipe against one of the incisions.

"Fucking —_ fuck_. Ow."

"You want some help with that?"

"Jesus," she breathed, looking up at me with blue eyes all watery and bloodshot. "Don't sneak up on me, Harry."

"Didn't mean to."

She frowned and fumbled with the package of another antiseptic wipe until she moved wrong and flinched. I knelt next to her and caught her hands. She didn't stop me as I rolled up the overly-long sleeves and took the first aid supplies, too tired to protest.

"So is the floor where you started, or where you landed?"

"Can't fall off the floor."

"As a longtime fan of Jell-O shots, I have to disagree."

She laughed once, then grimaced as I started where she had left off, silent except for the tense hiss of her breath through her teeth as she leaned her forehead against my shoulder, the scrape of her nails against the tile.

"We need to talk."

"Talk about what?"

There was no dread in her voice at all, just concern. If she had said that to me, I would have had a goddamn heart attack.

"Archery. And, uh." I grabbed the box of bandages and the medical tape and set to work. "_Aliens: Armageddon?"_

Murphy glanced up at me, almost smiling. "How much trouble am I in?"

"None, at least not with me. But I do want to hear about it."

"It's a good hobby for kids. Has a lot of the same benefits as martial arts, just… you know. It's quiet and meditative and empowering, but without anybody putting their hands on you."

I nodded, unsure of what to say. Murphy knew as well as I did how terrible it was to be made fully and violently aware of your own limitations. Which was honestly bad enough to go through as a grown-ass man; I could only begin to understand how incomprehensibly awful it must have felt to a tiny little girl.

But she knew. "I didn't think you'd mind."

She also knew how to get past it, and it wasn't really surprising that she, of anyone, could get the kid who could barely stand to make eye-contact to go to a baseball game.

"I don't mind at all. I just want the occasional update." I did up the Velcro on her knee brace, then the one for her shoulder. "How's that? Too tight?"

"Harry." She caught my hand and held it for a moment. "I didn't want to make you feel bad about missing out."

"I kinda figured—"

"But I didn't want her to miss out, either."

She still wouldn't quite look at me, silent tears tracked down her face. Maybe it all hit just a little too close to home for her, or maybe the exhaustion and pain had finally caught up with her. Probably both. She loathed being vulnerable, she had worked for so long to keep from showing any sort of weakness, it was like seeing the far side of the moon; a completely different version of something so familiar.

"Well, I prefer the bedtime stories and tea parties and cute stuff, anyway, so consider yourself officially in charge of the badass stuff." I brushed her hair out of her eyes, the tears from her cheeks, and she smiled a little.

"I'm no faerie godmother."

"Thank god. You would have turned me into a houseplant years ago. Come on." I helped her to her feet and together we staggered into the bedroom. She kind of melted out of my arms and into the bed, blinking sleepily against the light from the bathroom. I sat down on the edge, clumsily straightening the blankets and fluffing up a pillow. "Will you be alright back here?"

"No."

"No?"

"Somebody has to wake me up in a few hours to take another handful of pills."

I knew without a doubt that she could have handled this all on her own. She would have been fine without me, but being alone wasn't what either of us wanted, and she was too stubborn to just _ask_, and god help me if that wasn't one of my favorite things about her.

"Alright." I reached for the clock. "What time?"

"Three-thirty."

"Yikes."

"Well, you've already got more bedside manner than my previous night nurse." She leaned against me for a moment, warm and soft, pressed against my back as she kissed a spot behind my ear. "Better looking, too."

"Flattery will get you nowhere." I reset the alarm, letting myself feel the pull of exhaustion. Part of me wanted nothing more than to wrap her in my arms and sleep for a month.

"I find that hard to believe."

I thought about making a joke. I kicked off my boots, instead. "So Charity invited us over for burgers this weekend."

"Yeah, she texted me."

"Invited us, like," I shrugged. _"Us?"_

"Oh," Murphy said. "Are we telling people—"

"The only person I've told is Butters." That was mostly true. Kincaid had figured it out on his own, and Mac had overheard that conversation. "And then Maggie asked me, on the way back—" I couldn't keep from laughing— "She asked me if you were my girlfriend."

"Well?"

"I mean," I gestured vaguely. "We didn't really… we didn't talk about that."

"What is there to talk about? We wanted to give this a shot, and here we are—"

"No, I mean how this is a package deal, now." I pushed my boots under the bed. "One dumbass wizard, a metric fuckton of PTSD, a dog, a cat, a real kid, spirit kid, all for one low, low price—"

Murphy snorted softly. "You said _package."_

"I'm being serious." I dug through the footlocker for sweats and a t-shirt that didn't have dog drool on it.

"You can do that?"

"I can try."

I stood and fumbled with the buttons on my shirt, more nervous than I'd been since I was a dumbass teenager and my other attractive best friend had been half-naked, waiting for me in my bed. Did I have a type? _Dangerous blondes who know too much,_ I could almost hear Bob cackling. What was I so freaked out about? There was literally zero pressure. It wasn't as if anything was going to happen. _Not with that attitude, it's not! _

I tried not to think about it as I threw my shirt into the chair by the fireplace, followed by a belt, jeans, socks, until I stood there in nothing but my donut-print boxers.

She settled back against a pillow and looked me over with a sly smile and a wink. "Nice."

"Don't change the subject," I warned her. Then I turned and hightailed it into the bathroom, hopped into the sweats, pulled on the t-shirt and reached for the bag of toiletries on the edge of the sink. I washed the dog slobber off my face with hands that only shook a little – maybe I was kind of weirded-out by the fact that this all should have felt… well, weirder.

Though as far as doing weird stuff together went, sleeping in the same bed didn't even make it into the top twenty-five — I was rationalizing, stalling, and I could hear her laughing.

"'_Don't change the subject,'_ he says, and then immediately leaves. Very on-brand for you, Harry."

I poked my head through the open door.

"I just want to make sure it's not a problem—" I said around the toothbrush in my mouth, and it came out sounding like an indignant Wookiee with rabies.

"What? Of course it's not a problem." Murphy frowned at me, taken aback, as if the thought had never even occurred to her. "I'm happy for you. Both of you," she continued, as I rinsed and threw the toothbrush back in the bag and turned out the bathroom light.

I shuffled back to bed in the dark, guided by the glowing radioactive hands of the Spiderman alarm clock, and her voice, soft and amused:

"Also the cute single dad thing is _definitely_ working in your favor."

"Oh?"

My shins hit the bed frame. A hand caught my wrist and pulled me into bed, into a kiss; sharp and sweet like peppermint toothpaste, slow and gentle and underpinned with relentless need.

... One that obviously wasn't going to be met tonight.

"Yep." I felt her smile, sigh, the shift as she turned onto her uninjured side and pulled the blankets up. "Goodnight."

I hadn't really appreciated just how tired I was until my head hit the pillow. I had slept a total of maybe twelve hours over the past week, every waking moment had been busy, spent trying to get my shit together, and be in a real relationship, trying to figure out the whole _dad _thing, and—

_Oh._

I stared wide-eyed at the pitch dark ceiling, blinking at the startling realization that _she had a type, too._

"What's so goddamn funny?" Murphy mumbled, annoyed.

"Nothing." I grinned. "Mind your business."

* * *

stay safe, kids


	5. the bright side of hell-bent

_**May Contain:**_ _Firefly_. A _Sirens_ reference, because that show is a gem. Star Wars _Rebels. LOTR. Zootopia._ Callbacks to events in _Dead Beat_ and _Proven Guilty, Aftermath. _

_**Definitely Contains: **_adult language/themes. Fluffy, incredibly unlikely filler. Harry, trying his best not to be That Guy. I hope you guys enjoy this silly break from the shitshow that is 2020. Super excited for the next book, though. :)

* * *

"Thanks again for seeing me about this on such short notice. I've heard things get a little busy around here on the weekends." I handed the file folder over to my lawyer and settled into the office chair. "I can honestly say I didn't expect to be doing this again. Like, ever."

"The feeling is mutual." Father Forthill glanced at me over the file. "I've updated directives before, but I've never drawn up a will for the same person twice."

"Here's hoping you don't have to read this one," I said, brightly. He frowned. Maybe I didn't sound entirely convinced. It was hard not to think about the last time I had been at the church, the dim and quiet rooms where I had talked with friends, eaten more sandwiches than I could count.

Oh, and planned my own death.

"You did a good job putting all of this together, Harry. Did you — did you do this on a typewriter?" he asked, peering at the first page.

"Yeah." Another one of Charity Carpenter's yard sale finds, hauled to my place in a red Radio Flyer wagon by Maggie, who had then taken it upon herself to patiently teach me how to type _the right way._ There had been a lot of quick brown foxes jumping over lazy dogs. Even typing the right way, it had still taken me about a day and a half to put it all together.

"It looks like you've covered most of your bases; guardianship, assets, and divestment of — oh my word," he said, staring at the bank slip attached to the file.

Managing it had been a little shady. Thomas had done most of it. I had refrained from asking too many questions about how he was able to move so many diamonds in so little time without raising suspicion. Now I had a nice, squishy account, coincidentally with the same Swiss bank as Kincaid, which was endlessly amusing to me. The rest and some cash were stashed somewhere safe.

"I take it the new job pays a bit better."

I shrugged. I wasn't sure how much Forthill knew about the heist Nicodemus had tried to pull, what he'd managed to steal, what I had taken. Part of me wanted to tell him, but I knew the priest would want me to turn everything over, even though the Church kept managing to lose things, whether from pure incompetence or due to corrupt infiltration. Probably the second one, and I had a much more secure location for storing immensely powerful holy relics, anyway.

"Like I said, I think you've covered most of your bases here," he repeated, meeting my eyes for a moment. "Except for last wishes."

"Let's go with the usual. Earthly remains reduced to ashes and those ashes put into a coffee can." I mimed a forward pass. "And that coffee can launched into the sun, like in _Wrath of Khan."_

Forthill frowned at me. The corner of his mouth twitched. "I'm serious, Harry."

"So am I. Bagpipes and everything."

"We'll circle back to that." He almost smiled as he picked up a pen and began to take notes. "Let me go through this with you, just for certainty's sake. Who do you want to name as executor and power of attorney—"

"Same as last time. Uh, page three."

He nodded and scribbled a note. "And guardianship of your daughter?"

"Michael and Charity."

"And if, God forbid—"

"That's all on page four," I said, and he flipped through the paper-clipped pages, nodding along as he read.

"Mhm, I thought so." Forthill made a note on his giant desk calendar and another on the papers I'd given him. He fixed me with a piercing blue stare over his silver-framed glasses. "You know, having a prior legal arrangement with the individual to whom you wish to entrust guardianship, property or financial assets would make this much easier on your lawyer."

I blinked at him. He smiled broadly.

"And if the two of you wanted to make things official, I would be delighted to—"

_"Whoa,_" I waved a hand as my brain finished translating the legalese. Hell's bells, dealing with lawyers and clergy is just as dangerous as dealing with the Fae. "Hold those holy horses, Padre. It's not like that."

"Is it not?" he asked, genuinely curious.

I hesitated. My mistake. "That… that's not what I'm here about—"

His smile got a little wider. "How is Karrin doing, anyway? I haven't seen her since she was in the hospital."

She had been out for almost a week now, but still slept for hours at a stretch during the day, her head in my lap while I read from a stack of dusty old books on the metaphysical properties of early Christian relics. Boring research, and that's coming from a guy who's done _a lot_ of boring research. When she wasn't asleep, she was a little moody. Her tolerance for being laid-up was starting to thin. Murphy wasn't the type of person who enjoyed sitting still for longer than the meditation part of a yoga class, and that was probably pushing it.

"Better." I cleared my throat and shrugged. Maybe Butters was right about us being obvious. Or maybe he was just a terrible gossip. Or both. "Still on a lot of pain meds."

"And glad to be out, I'm assuming."

"You have no idea. She told me you stopped by a few times." What she had told me was that Forthill had been there when she woke up, and then for several hours early every morning afterward, armed with a box of donuts, a rosary and a thirty-eight special. The Official Swords of the Cross Rulebook may state that it's a foul to try to kill the Denarians outright without a chance to let them repent or whatever, but it was probably pretty fuzzy on the subject of shooting them in their creepy-ass backward kneecaps. "Thank you, by the way. I would have liked to stay with her myself, but—"

"Between Mister Butters, Officer Rawlins, your friend Thomas and that big Swedish fellow, I felt like we had a fighting chance. But I think she would have preferred your company. Or at least that's what she told me. Several times."

"Yeah." I grimaced. "Morphine Murphy has no filter."

The priest smiled as he tapped one finger on the file. "I'll call you when I get this drawn up, and you can sign it." He stood as I did, and walked with me to the door. "It might take a week or so. Easter is right around the corner, and if you think things are busy today—"

"No rush," I said, digging in a coat pocket for an envelope. "Here."

He held up a hand. "Don't worry about my fee—"

"No, this is a—" I pushed it at him, kind of sheepishly. I'd never had the opportunity to do something like this before, and social graces had never really been my thing. "A donation."

Forthill's eyebrows climbed as he took the envelope. He peered at the contents, blinking. Then he went kind of pale and crossed himself, murmuring in Latin before he looked up at me. "This… this is—"

"Just think of it as sort of a Sherwood Forest-style redistribution," I suggested, reaching for the door before he could try to give it back. "It'll buy a lot of sandwiches."

"Would you like a receipt?" he asked, still blinking.

"Nah. I'm kinda hoping the IRS still thinks I'm dead."

"Bless you, Harry." Forthill burst out laughing. "But you'll have to hire a different kind of lawyer when they figure it out." He checked his watch. "I have to start preparing for our evening service, but you're more than welcome to stay—"

"Thanks, but I've got to go buy ice cream."

"Don't hesitate to call, if you change your mind about—"

"Yeah, yeah, I've got your number."

I headed to the parking lot, red-faced, and sat with my forehead against the steering wheel of Murphy's recently-repaired SUV for a minute.

The radio blared, though I hadn't even keyed the ignition, much less reached for the dial. Billy Idol screeched at me; _hey, little sister shotgun._

"Subtle," I said, glancing skyward. "_And _malicious."

* * *

"Heads up," said Michael, as he tossed me a frosty bottle from the cooler. It was an almost unseasonably sunny late afternoon, the first real hint of spring, but the Carpenters' lawn was already Fourth of July green. The bottle sailed past my hand, landed in the grass and rolled into the twiggy lilac hedge by the backyard fence. I scrambled after it.

I retrieved the beer, unscathed but too shaken to be opened, and left it in the cup holder of one of the nearby folding lawn chairs. He grabbed another beer and handed it to me, grinning as he turned his attention to the massive barbecue grill, one of those numbers that looks like it's made from a fifty gallon barrel. It had wheels and a damned smokestack, and held enough burgers to feed a small army.

Mouse had parked himself in the shade between the lawn chairs, close to all the good smells and in a prime location to catch anything we might drop.

The kids were all inside, doing some sort of video game tournament thing with Butters. I could hear shouting all the way from the living room on the far side of the house. Karrin was at the picnic table with Charity and Andi, in the middle of some game that involved a lot of high-pitched, girly giggling and not a lot of actual card-playing. She looked more like herself than she had in a week. There was color in her face again, and the bruises had mostly faded. She wore actual clothes instead of pajamas; gray yoga leggings, a white tee, an oversized denim shirt that didn't have enough scorch marks on it to be mine. Her sunglasses were perched on top of her head and her hair was pulled into a slightly-messy ponytail – my handiwork, since she still couldn't raise her left arm.

Murphy noticed me staring and rolled her eyes, still not done with the indignation of being thrown over my shoulder and carried down the street like a sack of potatoes, after she had refused to be transported via Radio Flyer.

"And then the ambulance showed up, and they hauled him off." Michael had been relating a story about some accident that had happened at a construction site near one of his own, or at least that's what it sounded like, as I had only caught every other sentence.

"That's _crazy_," I said, as she glanced at me again and smiled in a way that made me warm all over. Not that that was anything new or different; there had always been _something_ there. I had spent a long time ignoring it, and now I couldn't.

Michael snorted. "He had six feet of rebar through his chest and he was still talking, it was more miraculous than crazy—"

I tried to smile back, but it felt like I was mostly just staring. Probably drooling. I wiped my sweating palms on my jeans, or the right one, anyway. Scar tissue doesn't sweat, and the only thing I could really feel was the icy condensation on the bottle against the unscarred part of my palm.

It didn't matter that the mark was gone, I still thought about her every time I saw it. The hellbitch had known exactly what she was doing the first time she showed up in her cute, helpful, wholesome blonde costume – something Lasciel knew would appeal to Subconscious Me, who had been _way_ into it. I had the fleeting impression of the guy sitting on the floor of some dim room while he patiently chucked a baseball at the wall like McQueen in _The Great Escape, _all smugly self-satisfied about this particular turn of events, still biding his time.

I shook my head and drank my beer, and I didn't _mean_ to eavesdrop on the conversation happening at the picnic table. I'm still not sure if it's a magic thing or not, I'm just really good at Listening. Hearing your own name would get anyone's attention, and I watched from the corner of my eye.

"— and he said you were staying at Harry's new place while you _'recuperate.'''_ Andi wiggled her eyebrows and grinned as she leaned in, both elbows on the table. "So how's that going, anyways?"

"Oh, you know," Murphy said flatly. "Just non-stop sex, drugs, and rock and roll."

Andi giggled. Charity put her face in her hands and shook her head.

"I'm _kidding."_ Karrin flicked a card at her. "Except for the part about the drugs. Honestly, it's been... mostly nice."

"Only mostly?"

"Except for feeling like I was run over by the Blue Line?" I could hear the annoyed smile in Murphy's voice. "And the fact that we're not allowed to—"

Whatever she said was lost between another mortified gasp and a witchy cackle, but I was pretty sure I could fill in the blanks on that one myself.

"What? All the kids are inside," she said impertinently, which was cute as hell. "Speaking of which, you have enough of those to start your own basketball team, at least one had to have been recreational."

Charity said nothing and went a faint shade of pink.

"Or because there was nothing good on TV," Andi supplied, as she and Karrin exchanged a glance and a grin. "Or because the pizza delivery was taking too long."

"Or because you had been arguing and needed to make up. Or because you _started_ the argument to have a good excuse to make up."

"Or because he got back from the gym all sweaty and stuff. Thank you, by the way."

"You're welcome," said Murphy, as the two exchanged a victorious fist bump. Charity's face had gone a shade of scandalized scarlet, but if conversations like that had happened more often at the Carpenter house, I might not have had to dump a pitcher of ice water on her daughter, way back when.

I wasn't about to tell her, though.

"Well," Andi picked through her cards, rearranging them. "I think it's sweet that he thinks he needs to take care of you."

There was a beat of silence, a laugh that made my heart skip nervously.

"You know, he brought me breakfast in bed. I was married twice and neither of them ever did that, not on my birthday, not even once. Granted, there were a_ lot_ of things Rick never did, so the bar is kind of low—"

"Practically on the ground," Charity said as she shot Murphy a side-eyed stare, like she was doubting not only her taste in men but her sanity as well.

"That's enough out of you, Mrs._ My Husband Rescued Me From a Dragon." _

I bit my lip, trying not to grin. Calling it breakfastwas a bit of a stretch – it had been Eggos and only-slightly burnt bacon, some coffee, one of those tiny oranges she likes, a handful of little white flowers I'd picked in the backyard and put in a mug. It had been a fumbling attempt at being romantic, which was not really my strong suit.

And it had been an _excuse_. Sleeping in the same bed was one thing. We were both too exhausted (and injured, and medicated) for much of anything beyond actual sleep. Waking up with a faceful of silky, strawberry scented hair and her perfectly-sculpted ass pressed against my hips was something else entirely. Being able to stand up to torture was a matter of personal pride for me, but this was just too painfully ironic. It wasn't as if I could go for a run to blow off steam, which was what I would have preferred over escaping into the kitchen, though a run obviously wasn't my first choice, either. And maybe she could handle it with all the serene mental fortitude of some kind of warrior priestess, but I was about to crack.

Somebody smacked me on the shoulder.

"_What_," I snapped, startled out of a nice little daydream about helping her test the structural integrity of that picnic table.

"Harry." Michael pointed at the grill. "The burgers are burning."

"Hell's bells." I scooped the burgers off of the flames and onto the platter he handed me. "Sorry."

"It's fine. The kids won't eat them rare, anyway." He frowned at me. "Are you alright?"

"Haven't been sleeping well." That wasn't entirely true. I had been sleeping better in the past few days than I had when I was actually, factually dead. Unfortunately, I had been waking up every morning at four, ready to fucking roll, all amped-up on adrenaline and testosterone with no outlet for either. "I'll be right back."

Mouse shambled to his feet and followed me as I took the tray of burgers into the kitchen. I tried to ignore the snickering and whispering as I passed the picnic table. All three women were watching me intently. Unnervingly, especially considering the fact that I had witnessed, up-close, how very dangerous each of them were.

I swapped the overcooked hamburgers for the dish of uncooked chicken while the dog stared at me through the screen door and drooled on the steps. The conversation got quiet as I passed the table again, but they were still chatting in hushed tones, leaning in closer still.

"Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it. But sometimes a girl wants a little... not nice. And that's obviously not happening."

"Tell me about it," Andi sighed sympathetically. "You might have to just do it yourself."

Charity made a sound I'd only ever heard from someone who was in anaphylactic shock. I fumbled the tray of chicken and a piece rolled into the grass. Mouse nabbed it and took off across the yard with his prize, bounding with as much glee as a dog that size could manage.

"I meant _make a move."_ Andi threw down one card and picked up another. "Just send him some classy nudes. Works like—" she snapped her fingers.

"I know this is an irresistible look, but Harry doesn't own any technology built after the Cold War, so that's out."

I almost dropped the tray again as I handed it off to Michael. _Out?_ I hadn't even known it was an option. And I definitely needed to high-five Butters.

"Oh, right, the no-tech thing. Ooh, how about a Renaissance-style portrait? My old roommate does those. Very tasteful."

Murphy snorted. "Hard pass."

"A risqué telegram," Charity suggested daringly, deigning to participate in the conversation now that the joke was at my expense instead of hers. "But that might get confusing."

"Right?" Andi agreed. "Take off your pants. _Stop. _Hey, why'd you stop? _Stop."_

"Very funny. Pretty sure he knows Morse code, though, so I'll take that one under advisement."

The most embarrassing part of any of it was that she was _right_.

"I've got it." From the corner of my eye, I saw Andi gesture grandly. "Polaroids. But sent by ravens. I have a camera, you can borrow the ravens from work. It'll be fun, like when we dyed your hair for that mission."

"We don't… we don't have ravens."

"Pfft. What kind of lame-ass Vikings don't even have ravens?"

"Remind me to bring it up at the next meeting," said Karrin, as she laid down her cards. "I've got gin."

"Honey, we're playing crazy eights," Charity said, holding back a laugh.

_"Damn,"_ she swore softly, and the other two howled.

"Sounds like they're having a good time," Michael observed, fondly oblivious.

"Sounds like," I agreed, wide-eyed. So much for that serene mental fortitude.

"How is it going at the new place?" he asked.

"Good. It's going good."

"Having a little extra money surely makes things a bit more comfortable, doesn't it?" he said, like he was talking about a nice tax return and not an actual freaking lockbox full of diamonds. He flipped a few pieces of chicken. "Maggie told me all about her new room, she was so excited."

She still hadn't wanted to stay, though, and I couldn't fault her for that. I was essentially a stranger. But she had been by every day after school for help with homework, and dinner, and we had taken Mouse to the dog park the day before. It was slow going, but it was progress, and that was better than nothing.

"Charity thinks you're going to spoil her," he added, with a sideways glance and a grin.

This from the man who had once roped me into spending an entire weekend tracking down a lost security blanket – and then rinse and repeat for several years with a ratty old teddy bear, a pair of lucky track shoes, a backpack left on the train, etcetera.

"My kid." I took a long drink. "I'll spoil her if I damn well want."

If I _want_, like I had an actual choice in the matter. I wouldn't be able to stop myself if I tried.

Michael smiled and shrugged and I had a nagging suspicion that if it weren't for Charity reining him in, the property would have been covered over with ponies and pink convertibles long before they ever won the Underworld Clearinghouse Sweepstakes. He cleared his throat and changed the subject. "Karrin seems to be doing well."

"Toughest person I know," I said, glancing at Michael, who – despite his own injuries at the hands of the Denarians – was still an absolute wall of a man. I'd seen him beat a guy nearly to death with his walking stick once. "Well, toughest by volume."

He laughed for a moment, and then fell silent, contemplative. "It's hard, you know. Going from being able to handle anything to being dependent on someone else for almost everything. Being defenseless when you're used to being the one on the front lines." He poked at a piece of chicken with the spatula, his expression distant. "It can put you in a dark place."

"She seems like she's doing alright. So far."

At any rate, she was doing better than I had the last time I had gotten my ass kicked that hard. She hadn't sold out to the Fae for a power-up, and then immediately tried to weasel out of selling out.

"Well, I would tell you to keep an eye on her," Michael said, amused. "If you could manage to look anywhere else."

I choked on my beer.

"I've always thought you two would make a good match." He slapped me across the back. "And I know Charity is relieved. No offense."

Relieved that I wasn't involved with her daughter, he meant, but Michael was too polite to say it. She had been quite a bit friendlier toward me since figuring that one out. Helping set all of their kids up for college hadn't hurt.

"None taken," I sputtered through a lungful of suds, though I was more than willing to aspirate on ale if it could get me out of this conversation, because I had a pretty good idea of what he was going to say next.

"I just don't understand why you waited so long."

"Well, before last week," I started counting on one hand, "I was kind of stuck out on the island, and before that I was kinda dead, and before that she was kind of my boss—"

"You dated that Warden Captain, though," he interrupted, gesturing vaguely with the spatula. "Wasn't she your boss?"

Was nothing a secret? "I mean, technically, she outranks me, but—"

"So the problem wasn't what she was to you, but _who_."

I just sighed. He wasn't wrong. The matter of rank had never been an issue between Luccio and me, since at the time she had stepped back from commanding the Wardens in the field. But we weren't _best_ _friends,_ either. We didn't have a nice long history of solved cases and inside jokes and near-death experiences. We hadn't spent years risking our necks for each other, over and over, convincing ourselves that if we crossed the line and things went wrong, there would be no way back to how they were before.

Not to mention the miserable fact that poor Ana had been a Black Council sleeper cell, under a magical compulsion the entire time we had been together, keeping tabs on me. And if that doesn't ruin a guy's confidence, I don't know what will.

"I've always liked Karrin. She's a good person," he said, as I turned toward him a baleful glare. Michael only had one piece of relationship advice and it was to _get married ASAP. _ "Smart. Dependable. Always has your back in a fight. She's brave to a fault, loyal, obviously cares a great deal about you," he continued, like it wasn't a vast understatement.

She was all of those things, fearless and faithful and inexplicably fond of me, enough to go kamikaze on the scariest guy we knew. Enough to tell me that if I took the left hand path, she would follow. Enough to hold the line while I was on the bench. Maybe Michael was just used to that kind of relationship. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be. How the hell would I know, when my track record included such highlights as _She_ _Pretended to be Dead for Ten Years! _and _She_ _Fucked Off to South America Without Telling Me About the Kid_, and the classic _Somebody Brainwashed Her Into Dating Me._

"Good with children. Pretty, too," he admitted. "A good sense of humor – that's important, but I think in your case, probably a necessity."

"I already know she's out of my league." I snatched the spatula out of his hand. "I don't need an itemized list of _how."_

"That's not what I was saying and you know it." He took it back, gently bumping me out of the way with his elbow to flip a few more pieces of chicken. "I'm surprised that it's taken you this long, is all. You both seem — well, it's been a while since I've seen you happy. And I've never seen her smile like that. I didn't know she could."

"It's not like we never talked about it." I shrugged and kicked at the grass with the toe of one boot. "There were a couple of instances before that just didn't really… didn't lead anywhere."

"Oh?" Michael frowned at me. He blinked in sudden, dawning comprehension. _"Oh."_

I shrugged again and opened another beer and managed to drink most of it before he spoke.

"You mean you—"

"Nope."

"Not even—"

"Not even," I said through clenched teeth.

"Oh," he said again, carefully. "And now you — but you two have always seemed so close, I kind of assumed—"

"Yeah, you and everybody else," I grumbled.

"Harry." He put a hand on my shoulder, turning me to face him. "You're _serious."_

"Of course I'm serious." I shook his hand away, so red in the face that somebody could have written _STOP_ across my forehead and propped me up at the nearest intersection. "Why the hell would I lie about_ not—"_

And then he started chuckling as he leaned on his walking stick, laughing harder as he dropped into one of the folding lawn chairs by the grill.

"What's so damned funny," I demanded.

"Charity owes me a steak dinner," he confessed.

"Owes you — you were… you guys were _betting on me_."

The look he shot me was a little sheepish, not quite contrite.

"Betting on me and her—" I had to bite back a laugh. "Come on, man. That's not cool."

Not cool, but not really unexpected – they'd had a pool for each of their kids' birth dates, and I had actually won twenty bucks betting that Hope was a Hope and not a _Henry_. I wasn't sure whether or not to be flattered that he thought so highly of me as to wager in my favor. Although it didn't really feel like it was in my favor. That was a bet I would have gladly let him lose.

"Harry, I—" he began an apology I knew he truly meant, but now we were _both_ laughing.

"No, it's okay," I sighed. "I would have taken those odds, too."

"You know my wife hasn't always been your biggest fan. She was convinced you were out there doing unspeakable things, summoning demons and corrupting her daughter—"

"Excuse me," I put an offended hand on my chest. "But _I_ was the one being corrupted. Molly made me listen to a lot of terrible music and got me hooked on expensive coffee."

Michael laughed even harder.

"A steak dinner," I echoed.

"For both our sakes, don't tell her I told you."

"For both our sakes, you should have upped the ante." I dropped into the folding chair next to his. "And then maybe at least one of us would have gotten something out of it."

He turned toward me, wearing an expression somehow both reproving and rueful. "All things considered, yours is not a bad problem to have. Although I think there's someone else you can talk to who will be more help in that department than me."

"Hey, I already went to church once today and it didn't take."

"I meant you should talk to your brother," he said, seriously. "But the Lord knows that wouldn't hurt, either—"

We both looked up just before the screen door slammed open. A battle spilled out into the yard – a gaggle of girls armed with brightly-colored plastic guns, pursued by Butters, who wore a cheap plastic Darth Vader mask and a cape made of a garbage bag. Harry Carpenter followed, close on his heels, in a too-big Stormtrooper helmet that wobbled with every step, a Nerf pistol in each hand.

The girls giggled and shrieked, scattered and let loose with a volley of foam darts. All except for Maggie, who was scrambling down the brick path through the yard, brandishing a sword of similarly foamy make, still between the rest of the girls and the Dollar Menu Sith Lord.

She was only a few feet from me when she tripped on a loose shoelace, and I only just caught her before she ended up with a faceful of brick. I had to dive to catch her, and it knocked the wind out of both of us.

"Whoa, Speed Racer." I set her on her feet. "You okay?"

The girl nodded shakily, taking a deep breath.

"Timeout," announced Vader, holding his hands in a T. He pushed his mask up with one finger. "Are you alright?"

"I'm okay." Maggie dusted off her overalls and picked up her sword.

"Then join us," he intoned as he flipped the mask down again with a sharp nod, like a welder's helmet, and extended a dramatic Vader-y hand.

"Never!"

"It is your destiny, young Jedi."

"I am no Jedi," she shouted, trying not to giggle. Darth Butters elbowed the trooper, who leveled both blasters at us. He pulled the triggers and if I hadn't seen it myself, I would have hardly believed it, but she snapped that little foam sword up and blocked both shots in one swing.

Harry Carpenter dropped his guns and pushed his helmet off, blue eyes completely round in terror and admiration. "Are you _sure?"_

Darth Butters was doubled over, clutching his ribs. High, wheezy laughter filtered through the mask's cheap voice modulator, and they were both immediately hit by another volley of darts as the battle picked back up. Charity was waving the kids away from the table. Andi was fishing a foam dart out of her glass of iced tea.

"Did you see?" Maggie turned toward me, excited. "That was so cool!"

"That was _really_ cool. How'd you do that?"

"I dunno—" her voice trailed off as she looked down at a scrape on the heel of her hand, from her tumble on the path. It wasn't bad, bleeding some and flecked with dirt. She looked at me, even paler than usual, dark eyes huge. She swayed a little and dropped her sword.

"Let's go clean that up," I said, as I scooped her up in one arm and headed for the house. I grabbed the first aid kit from the kitchen cabinet and carried her into the downstairs bathroom. By the time I set her down on the counter by the bathroom sink, she looked a little less woozy.

Fainting at the sight of blood is supposedly the vestiges of some sort of evolutionary response, like the way a possum plays dead. If something attacks you or someone nearby, you see blood and pass the hell out, there's a slight chance it'll get bored and leave you alone. It's a common reaction. It happens to a lot of folks. But then again, a lot of folks have never been abducted by vampires and held captive for a ritual sacrifice.

She was still ghostly pale, looking steadfastly away as I cleaned her hand and put a Band-Aid on it. "Does it hurt?"

"No. I'm not a _baby_," Maggie said stubbornly, scuffing tears from her eyes with the sleeve of her llama-print shirt. "I just don't like blood."

"Me neither." I smoothed her hair from her face. "It's alright. It happens to lots of people."

"Not you," she sniffled.

"Not for a long while." I kissed the top of her head. "I think it's almost time to eat, you'd better go save us a seat, and I'll bring you a burger."

"With mustard—"

"And cheese, I know."

She took my hand as she jumped down from the counter and darted toward the kitchen.

"Tie your shoes," I called after her. I turned and almost ran into Andi, who had silently appeared behind me in the hallway.

"Is she okay?"

"Just a scrape."

She smiled after the girl, then turned to me. "You need to stop eavesdropping on private conversations."

"What are you talking about?" I tried to step around her but she moved in front of me, blocking my escape. "I wasn't dropping any eaves."

"Mhm," was all she said, lips pressed in a thin line. She crossed her arms over the front of her baggy U of C sweatshirt and joggers; clothes chosen more for on-off expediency than to disguise dangerous curves. Andi had always been a looker, and was well aware of it. More importantly, she could turn into a big freaking wolf at will – one I had tangled with a few months ago in an ill-advised attempt to borrow Bob the Skull from Butter's apartment.

... Okay, _stole _is a more accurate term for what I did. More specifically, _breaking and entering_, a little bit of _home invasion _and_ armed robbery_. I didn't exactly feel good about it at the time, but I had been fairly low on options. Or at least that's what I had told myself.

Time to face the music.

"Hey, so I know it's kind of, uh. Too little, too late, but—"

"Don't apologize." One auburn brow arched. "You weren't expecting _me."_

I hadn't expected anyone at his place, much less a girlfriend, much less one that was sometimes a wolf.

"Definitely not_._ Just get me a list of the stuff I broke and I'll replace it."

"Can do." She smiled a bit wider, moving into the doorway. I was cornered. "So you and Karrin, huh?"

I leaned back against the hallway wall between rows of school portraits and groaned, dragging a hand down my face. "Can we not?"

"Already tired of hearing all the hot takes, are we?"

"Been talking to Butters, have we?"

Andi smirked and studied her fingernails. "Wally and I tell each other everything."

"_Wally."_ I felt my own eyebrows climbing. The look she shot me promised a swift kick to the crotch if I laughed. "That's disgustingly adorable."

"Not as cute as _this,"_ she said as she waved a generalizing hand in my direction. "You're a pair of white sneakers and a golf shirt from attaining dad-lightenment."

I scowled.

"Perfect." She held both hands up to make a frame around my face. "Now tell me I'm a disappointment, and threaten to cut up my credit cards."

"Jesus, Andi. Do you need a hug or something?"

"Nah. My best friend is a psychologist, I'm good."

"Speaking of friends." I nodded toward the kitchen door where I could see Murphy, still at the picnic table, trying to fix a Nerf gun that had jammed. "I didn't know the two of you were so buddy-buddy."

"We're cool. She helped me out a while back, and we hit it off."

"Trouble with the law?"

"With the Fomor."

"Well, you did the right thing, asking her—"

"I did the _only _thing." She frowned at me. "You were gone, and everything just kind of fell apart."

"It seemed like you guys had things under control—"

Andi's smile turned sharp. "Oh, you mean when you came back as some sort of Class Five Full Roaming Vapor and everything got _worse?"_

My mouth snapped shut so hard that my teeth clicked.

"There was only one person in control of anything." She nodded over her shoulder toward the door. "If that's how you want to describe the mess you dumped in her lap when you decided you were done. The one she handled like a fucking boss while everyone else got to grieve."

I had no right to be angry, but I could feel it creeping up, cold and bitter. "You don't know the whole story—"

"I know enough," she said, quietly. "I also know what it feels like to be the only one at the table who can't laugh while everybody else is telling funny anecdotes and making toasts and reminiscing. Or have you forgotten about Kirby already?"

Honestly, I was lucky she was just making biting remarks. Though it might have hurt less if she would just get it over with, drag me out into the backyard by the neck and bury me in a hole. "Of course not."

"As horrible as it sounds, at least I had closure. At least I knew for sure what had happened, where he was. I never imagined that would be something I'd be grateful for." When she looked up at me, her eyelashes were wet. "I know you mean well, Harry. I'm just tired of seeing my friends get hurt. And Waldo doesn't need my help standing up for himself, though. But I think you already know that."

"We talked," I nodded. "It was... informative."

"I think Karrin has the opposite problem. Nobody ever sticks up for her, nobody thinks they need to. And I probably don't need to, either, but – and I'm telling you this as someone who cares about you." She met my eyes for a moment, neither afraid nor angry, just resolute. I had to look away. She knew that _I knew_ I would never have the privilege of another one-on-one fight with any of the Alphas. That was a line I couldn't uncross. "If you ever hurt either of them like that again, I'll have to send what's left of you to Mab in a little paper bag."

"Can I get that in writing?"

She stepped back and looked me over, satisfied with my answer. Then she hugged me; a brief, squishy squeeze that had a lot more strength behind it than I would have guessed.

"I _am_ glad you're back, you know? Game night hasn't been the same without you."

"You guys are still doing that?"

"Every once in a while. I saved all your character sheets. Even your lame barbarian one."

"You're a good friend, Andi."

"Remember that when you're buying me a new 4K monitor."

"Just get me a list," I called after her, as she turned on a heel and sauntered away. I followed her into the kitchen, where Charity was explaining to a visibly-flustered Butters which dishes on the table were and were not kosher. He shot me an anguished look as I swiped a bacon-wrapped jalapeno from a tray and ate it in a single bite. The kitchen was full of kids assembling burgers, dodging around me at elbow height, squabbling over a bottle of ketchup. I made three plates and could have auditioned for the balancing act in a circus by the time I made it outside.

The picnic table was _almost_ big enough for everyone, Michael had pulled his folding chair to one end, and one of the girls was sitting in the grass next to him. I set one of the plates I had made down in front of Maggie, and one across from her, in front of Karrin.

"Move it or lose it," I said to my namesake, who was parked on the bench next to her. He grinned up at me, hopeful. Murphy shot me a warning look. I sighed. I set the third plate down in front of the youngest Carpenter and went back inside to make myself another burger, while Michael was saying grace. When I returned, the kid was on the opposite side of the table, next to Maggie.

"How is it?" I asked, as I sat down between Murphy and Butters, who shot me a grateful look when I snuck a few bacon jalapenos onto his plate.

"Pretty good," said Karrin, who was accustomed to my subpar culinary skills. Little Harry Carpenter flashed me a thumbs-up as he took a huge bite.

"It's good," said Maggie, who had taken her burger apart and had just finished adding a layer of barbecue-flavored chips to the layer of mustard. She smashed the top bun back on and held it out. "Wanna try?"

"I'll take your word for it."

I had always kind of wondered what it would have been like to grow up in a huge _Home Alone_ kind of family. _Loud_ was one word for it. There was a lot of good-natured yelling and laughing. Both Molly and Murphy had informed me that it wasn't all it was cracked up to be, though – I had my suspicions that being the oldest daughter in a strict Catholic household wasn't much fun for anyone, except for the guys they dated.

"Let's go get ice cream," Maggie tugged on the Carpenter boy's arm as soon as her plate was empty. "Dad brought all the stuff to make banana splits."

The rest of the kids followed, and the adults as well, until it was just me and Murphy at the picnic table. She was watching the commotion in the kitchen with her chin in her hand, her elbow on the table. The setting sun turned her hair to molten gold, cast her face in shadow. She noticed me staring and rolled her eyes again, smiling tiredly.

"We can go whenever you're ready," I said.

"It's fine." She covered my hand with hers on the bench between us. "We can stay a while longer."

"Ice cream, then?"

"Absolutely." She smiled and gave me a little push toward the house.

She was still alone when I returned, bearing a bowl of mint chocolate chip and two spoons, which seemed pretty basic compared to the gummy bear-laden monstrosities the kids were concocting in the kitchen.

We had shared dessert before, probably half a hundred times, but when she grinned at me and licked melted ice cream off the back of the spoon, I could feel my brain start to shut down, section by section. That hadn't been intentional. Or was it? Who knew? Not me. I didn't care, either, and couldn't stop myself as I reached for her. She caught my hand as I touched her face, and for a moment I thought she was trying to stop me, until I felt the brush of her lips against my fingertips. Her mouth was soft, dizzyingly warm, and she made a pleased sound that was definitely intentional.

The one I made was not.

The screen door slammed open again. I jumped and she let go of me, smirking.

"Get a room," Butters said as he walked by, carrying some techy stuff. Andi followed him, carrying a laundry basket of throw pillows and blankets. The girls following her carried even more. She chucked an old green blanket at me. "You guys need to move. You have that advanced entropic field thing," Butters reminded me, as they tied a plain white sheet up between two trees as a screen. "The Dresden exclusion zone."

"Rude," I said, as I picked Karrin up in one arm and claimed a spot under the treehouse. She smacked me across the ass with the cut-down walking stick Michael had given her, but didn't protest when I wrapped the army blanket around her shoulders and pulled her a little closer as I leaned back against the tree.

Maggie flopped down in the grass by my feet, next to Mouse, and after some debate amongst the younglings, they picked a silly animated cartoon about a bunny and a fox. It was well and truly dark when Harry Carpenter sat down next to her and offered some popcorn from a bowl. Maggie declined. The boy made a clumsy grab for her hand a few moments later. She shot him an annoyed look.

Murphy put a hand on my arm, though I hadn't made the conscious decision to move, or even realized I was doing it until I felt her pulling me back to my seat. She shook her head just once, but her eyes never left the makeshift screen. I settled back against the tree. The movie flickered once or twice at the edge of my vision.

Maggie frowned and pulled her fingers free of his. She moved a bit further away and hissed something that sounded like, _"Don't make it weird, Hank."_

Murphy snorted, clapped a hand over her nose and mouth a second too late. She glanced up at me, saw the look on my face and laughed even harder, muffled and squeaky. She'd laugh at me for the rest of the night, if I let her. There was really only one failsafe way to make her stop, and her eyes went wide as I pulled her closer still, her laughter smothered in a kiss.

_"Ew,"_ said a small, soft but emphatic voice.

I froze. Karrin pulled away and leaned her forehead against my chest, still shaking with suppressed giggles.

Maggie snickered and turned her attention back toward the movie. Harry Carpenter stared at us, blinking bemusedly, like he'd just learned something new. I pointed two fingers at my eyes, then at him. He swallowed hard and turned toward the screen, still and quiet as a mouse.

"Be nice," Murphy whispered. "It'll all be worth it when you get to watch Charity furiously slap frosting onto a wedding cake."

I choked on a laugh, then glanced around in a panic.

"Calm down, Harry," she said, in a tone halfway between amusement and jealousy. "They went inside like half an hour ago."

"... _Ew_."

* * *

y'all got any of them reviews? :D


	6. a lost cause, a long shot

_**May Contain: **_One (1) _Harry Potter_ joke._ Top Gun, Zombieland. Game of Thrones_. John Wick _and_ John Mulaney.

_**Definitely Contains:**_ adult language/themes, mentions of suicide. One count of attempted parkour. The mortifying ordeal of being Thomas Raith's younger brother. Vague references to my stories, _Lather, Rinse, Repeat _and _Cold Outside._ _#my daddy lets me say bitch_

Posting tonight to celebrate the new book coming out tomorrow. Kinda worried about my boy Thomas, though. D:

* * *

"Hey." I nodded at the man leaning against the pillar next to the front porch steps. I pulled the door shut behind me, tossed my shoes onto the _Come Back With a Warrant_ doormat and stepped into them, tugging at the laces. It was colder than I had anticipated, dreary and not actually light enough to qualify as morning. The air was sharp, it smelled like wet dirt and rain and spring.

"Hey." Thomas glanced up from his phone. He had a Bulls cap low over his eyes, black hair pulled into a samurai knot. He was decked out head to toe in expensive athletic gear, which made my basketball shorts and t-shirt seem shabby in comparison. "How's the leg?"

"Feels fine."

"Your doctor cleared you to run?"

"He said I could try it and see how it goes." I shrugged. "He was actually supposed to be here, too, but I guess he got called in to work."

"Cutting people open or cutting them up?"

"The first one, most likely."

Thomas shook his head. "I still can't believe it." He shoved his phone in a pocket and fell into step next to me as I headed toward the sidewalk

"You should have seen it."

"Kind of glad I missed out on all that. Especially after seeing the state of your sidelined sidekick." His expression shifted from handsome amusement to handsome concern. The bastard. "How is she, anyway?"

"Still asleep, lucky for you. If Murph heard you say that, I'd have to kick you, 'cause she can't. That was our arrangement."

"Doubtful," my brother laughed. "She thinks I'm pretty, so I usually get a pass."

"Yeah, well." I smacked him on the back of the head as he winked at the little old lady next door, her hair in curlers as she collected her newspaper from the curb. She frowned disapprovingly. "Can't win 'em all."

Thomas glared at me, but he followed me down the block, and waited on the sidewalk while I let myself in the gate at the Carpenters'.

"Are you ready?" I asked Mouse, who was polishing off the last of a bowl of kibble on the back steps. He sighed.

"Come on, you bum." I got his leash off the hook by the door. "You've been getting way too many treats and haven't had to run from very many bad guys lately. I saw you huffing and puffing at the zoo the other day."

He tilted his head. Mouse looked from me to Thomas, who leaned on the fence.

"Don't look at me, man." Thomas raised his hands. "This wasn't my idea. I love getting too many treats and not having to run from bad guys."

I scratched the big dog's ears as I clipped his leash onto his collar. Not that he had ever needed a leash. It was just a formality, mostly for other people, some of whom didn't like the idea of a two-hundred pound dog roaming around unchecked.

Mouse led the way to the little park around the corner. It was small, but just as nice as the rest of the neighborhood, with a stone stage for concerts and plays, a few concrete chess tables and benches, a tennis court, all shaded by large old trees, circled and divided by a quarter-mile jogging path. And it was completely empty. Not a soul to be seen, too early even for the septuagenarian power-walkers in their bright tracksuits. The lights of the tall wrought-iron lamp posts between the trees were only beginning to dim.

I handed Mouse's leash off and launched into a dead sprint around the path. I made a lap of the park before I slowed to a walk next to them again.

Thomas frowned at me. "That bad, huh?"

I wasn't even winded. "Is it that obvious?"

"Maybe not to everyone. To me?" He raised an eyebrow. "You might as well be walking naked down Michigan Avenue, ringing a bell and wearing a sandwich board that says _Will Work for Nookie._"

I narrowed my eyes at him, turned and did two laps in the opposite direction, just as fast. It felt good to move, and the wind rolling off the lake was nice and cold against my face. The bullet wound in my calf was a dull, inconsequential ache, and I had barely even broken a sweat. It would take a few more miles to get clear-headed, a few more after that to burn off all the jittery excess energy I couldn't seem to shake.

"So how long has it been?" Thomas asked, as I skidded to a stop next to him again. He and Mouse had been moseying along at a comfortable pace, so the dog could sniff all the interesting park smells on the tree trunks and under the benches. "I mean, with a real human woman. Not with some fae, they don't count."

I frowned. "Do they not?"

"They're basically the sexual equivalent of Marshmallow Peeps." He held out a hand. "Absolutely delicious. Fun colors and shapes, only show up around holidays, just a little _too_ perfect, and no nutritional value to speak of."

I snorted. Then I sighed. Nobody wanted to hear the answer, least of all me.

"So no fae either, huh?" he said, clicking his tongue against his teeth in disappointment, or sympathy. We made it down the short stretch of the path before he spoke again. "How are things going with the new girlfriend?"

"She's not my—"

Thomas cleared his throat and squinted skeptically as he handed me Mouse's leash.

"... Pretty good," I admitted, failing in my attempt to hide a silly grin.

"Just like I've been telling you, for _years?_ Both of you? On multiple occasions. Stubborn idiots." He put an elbow in my ribs as we picked up the pace, and he turned to me. "I meant physically, though."

"Of course you did."

Thomas had zero regard for the societal norms and boundaries of mere mortals, and his prying and oversharing were the price one paid for his advice. Making me uncomfortable was free and entertaining, and was one of his favorite hobbies. "So?"

It was quiet for a moment, except for the ring of our shoes on the concrete, the soft rumble of early-morning traffic on damp asphalt.

"I mean, it's kind of… not."

"Oof," said Thomas. "Maybe if you did something about that hair."

"That's not — it's because we're not supposed to — what part of _just got out of the hospital_ did you not understand?"

"Wouldn't slow me down."

"Dude," I said. "They gave her a list."

He stared unblinkingly at me as we ran, which was just creepy, until I got more specific.

"Okay," Thomas nodded. "Lots of other fun stuff to do, aside from that. Half the time, Justine and I don't even—"

"Nope. Don't need details."

"Harry," said my brother, the very voice of concern. "Do _you_ need a list?"

"_No?"_

"Because I can make you a list—"

I put a hand on his shoulder and shoved, and sent him rolling off the path into the grass. I kept running. Thomas caught up a dozen yards later, dusting off his shirt.

"Twitchy _and_ bitchy. Have you tried the, uh—" he gestured, crudely but specifically. "Manual override? Might help."

"Not recently," I said, flame-faced. "Seems kind of rude when she's like, right down the hall."

"Didn't seem to bother you when _I _was crashing at your place, and she would drop in for some made-up bullshit reason, and you guys would spend the entire time either arguing or flirting or both, and then you would disappear into your room for half an hour immediately after she left, and—"

"I did not."

"You totally did." He nodded solemnly. "Often enough to establish a noticeable pattern."

"Whatever." It was useless to try and lie to him anyway. "We're here to run, not play _psychoanalyze the wizard."_

"Fortunately for you, I can do both."

"Well," I scowled, running faster. "Then do a better job."

"Can't help unless you start talking. Something's bothering you, so spill, or I start charging for every minute I'm not at home in bed with my own foxy blonde."

I took a deep breath and sighed, slowed to a walk again. He looked at me, then pointedly at his watch, and back at me.

"I may have overheard her talking," I said, not meeting his curious gaze, "about being frustrated with how things are going. Well, _not_ going, I guess."

"Harry, you invited a severely-injured adrenaline junkie – one who has wanted to jump your bones for _years –_ to convalesce at your place. I'm not sure what you expected."

"I wasn't going to let her stay alone—"

"Doesn't she have a mom? Or a sister?"

"Murph gets along with her family about as well as you do with yours. I thought it might end in a shorter prison sentence this way—"

"And so what, for the past two weeks you've been bringing her breakfast in bed and chauffeuring her to all those doctor appointments and making grilled cheese sandwiches with the crust cut off—" Thomas glanced at me and confirmed his assumptions by the shade of red on my face. "You never did anything like that for me when _we_ were dating."

"You're nowhere near as cute."

"I'd bet good money that babying her is only making you feel better. Karrin doesn't like _easy. _You should know that better than anybody, judging from the amount of time she's spent willingly dealing with—_" _he waved a hand at me."This."

"Rude."

"I mean, I get it. It feels nice to be needed," Thomas continued. "I imagine especially so, to be needed by someone who rarely needs anything from anyone. But, as it turns out, she needs a little more than you're willing to give."

"It's not that I'm not willing," I grumbled. "Because I definitely am. But it's my — I'm the one who asked for her help, and—"

"You say that like you could have _stopped_ her."

"I could have asked you along, instead."

"But you didn't," he said, sing-song. My brother knew me better than almost anyone. He knew I didn't want to admit to myself that I had asked her along because, yeah, I needed someone I could trust to watch my back, and yeah, Murphy was more than capable of that, but also because there was a selfish, lonely part of me that had wanted to spend time with her. I had wanted things to feel a little bit normal again.

He glanced at me, and I realized I had been silent for almost an entire circuit of the park. I shook my head.

"I just don't want to hurt her."

"Oh, that suicide-by-ex-boyfriend ship has definitely sailed."

"You know what I mean."

"I know." He pulled off the grave and brooding look better than I did. He'd had more practice. There was a reason I'd called him, instead of parking myself on a stool at Mac's for a few hours. I knew Thomas would get it. "You're worried because you think Mab's got you all messed-up in the head. And it doesn't help that you're finally letting yourself feel all those feelings you bottled-up and ignored for so long you could sell them as a vintage. You've been half in love with her for as long as I've known either of you."

I made a sound of protest and he shot me a look that dared me to deny it.

"She obviously feels the same way. I mean, the woman literally went all _Battle of Pelennor Fields _for you. If that's not the real thing, I don't know what is. And if anyone ever deserved a nice, gentle gratitude bang—"

I put out a hand to shove him again, but he dodged out of the way. Thomas smiled brightly and shifted into a pace a little faster than a normal human could comfortably sustain, and by the time Mouse and I pulled even, we were halfway around the park again.

"I don't know what you're so worried about. Murphy is like ninety-percent of your impulse control, anyway," he said as I caught up with him. "She can't even go on vacation without you going off the fucking rails, summoning the Wild Hunt in her driveway and diving headfirst into dino-necromancy."

"Why do people keep bringing _that_ up?" I muttered.

"And she dated Kincaid, for god's sake," he continued, with a sideways look in my direction. "He doesn't exactly strike me as a lights-off, missionary position-only kind of guy."

I grimaced so hard it felt like my face might turn inside out. "Very reassuring," I managed between labored breaths. "Thanks."

"You know they did it, _a lot_, right?"

"I try not to think about it," I said, trying not to think about it — until I remembered what the merc had told me while we were sitting at the bar, and I cackled. "I do know _she_ was thinking about somebody else at least once, though."

My brother stopped cold for a moment and had to sprint a few steps to catch up with me for once. "How—"

"He told me."

Thomas's voice echoed in the empty park. "He told you."

"I ran into him at Mac's, the other day," I said, like we had met randomly, and I hadn't been tracked down at the only bar I frequent by the supernatural assassin who had already offed me once.

"Oh, boy. Was he more upset about that, or the fact that you threw off his kill-death ratio?"

"More amused than upset. About both."

"That's… somehow worse_."_

"No shit," I agreed.

"What a weird guy."

"Yeah, you're not the one who had to hear him suggest a threesome."

"Well." He made a face. "He is blond and terrifying, which is kind of your thing. And it would probably go over much better than the other stunt you guys pulled—"

"Y'know, I've never had internet access, and I didn't grow up with a bunch of porn stars, so I'm not completely bored with sex yet." I was pushing it to try to keep up, but Thomas and Mouse were still holding the slightly inhuman pace. "I think I'd be perfectly happy with the regular old two-player version."

_"Normal."_ Thomas scoffed. "Give it a few weeks, it'll be all handcuffs and riding crops and Reddi-Whip. Just you wait."

"I've done plenty of waiting—"

"Yeah, yeah," he grinned at me. "Twelve years of it, in Azkaban, I know—"

He was ready when I lunged at him, and darted out of reach, laughing maniacally as he sped away down the sidewalk. I dropped Mouse's leash and hauled ass after him, cutting through the chess tables, launching myself over a park bench with one hand. Thomas was fast, especially on a straightaway — one of the few safe-for-work perks of being a White Court vampire. Not quite fast enough, though. I cleared a flowerbed of half-dead roses, dove and took him out at the knees. We tumbled across the ground to a slightly muddy stop, both swearing the whole way. I sat up and spat out a mouthful of damp grass.

"Worth it," he wheezed. "Feel better?"

"A little." I climbed to my feet, trying not to wince at the sting in my calf as I put my weight on it. The running itself hadn't been so bad, but maybe it was a little soon to start hurdling park benches and tackling jackass siblings. "Let's go." I grabbed my brother's arm and hauled him up as Mouse trotted over. "We've got to get Mouse back before Charity takes the kids to school."

The dog's ears twitched at the mention of his name, and he looked a little relieved when I picked up his leash and we started back down the street.

We walked up just as Charity finished corralling the kids into the van - the newish hybrid one Molly had dubbed _Sandcrawler_ _II: Electric Boogaloo_. I unsnapped Mouse's leash and gave his ears a goodbye ruffle before he bounded to the van and one of the girls strapped on his service harness. Maggie was already in the back seat, buckled up, and she waved at me. I waved back. She blew a kiss at me. I caught it.

"Too cute." Thomas leaned towards me, his voice low. "Kind of hard to believe you're related to—"

Maggie pressed her nose against the window and made a hilarious face as the van pulled out of the driveway and onto the street.

"Never mind," he said, as we started down the block. "I see it now."

I smacked him on the back of the head, or I tried to, anyway. He ducked. Damn vampire reflexes. He smiled at me, brushing dirt from the sleeve of his jacket. "Well I, for one, am just happy you're finally out of the dugout and up to bat, and I will do everything in my considerable power to help you get to first base with your—"

"Third."

He blinked at me. "Oh?"

"I'm not _incompetent_," I said, ignoring his smirk. "It's just been a while since I… y'know. Got called up to the majors—"

Thomas snorted. "That's one way to put it."

"And between this," I nodded at the house, then thumbed over my shoulder in the direction the van bearing my daughter and dog had headed. "And that? I'm a little out of my depth."

"Seems like you're doing fine. Except for that hair. My advice? Clean yourself up and do something romantic. Make an effort."

I frowned at him as we paused on the porch steps. I muttered down the wards and opened the door. "What do you suggest, then, because I don't know if I can get more romantic than a handful of diamonds—"

"You… what?"

"I might have, uh. Kinda… gave her half of what I got from that big score."

_"You did what—"_

I put a finger to my lips and nodded toward the back of the house. "Still asleep."

"Jesus Christ, Harry. You do know technically you only had to give her _one_, right— whoa," he hesitated as he followed me inside. "Oh, wow."

"Wow, what?"

"It's never done that before." He pointed down at the threshold. I stopped and stretched out a hand. I could feel the prickle of the wards, a hum of power much stronger than the threshold at my old apartment, but it didn't feel any different to me than it had earlier that morning, or the day before. Thomas's eyebrows climbed and he pushed past me to make himself at home in the kitchen. He poured himself a cup of coffee and cleaned a smudge of mud off his face in his reflection in a spoon.

I pulled the spoon out of his fingers and stirred a heap of sugar into another mug. "There's cereal and stuff in the cabinet if you're hungry. I'll be back in a few."

Maybe Thomas could do a couple miles and still smell like whatever expensive cologne he smells like, but apparently that was not a shared familial trait.

I left the cup of coffee by the bed and took a quick, scalding shower. The water heater was in the basement, and from what I could tell, it had been rigged up by the svartalves — it didn't _ever_ run out of hot water. Which, after a lifetime of the opposite, was freaking heavenly, though I found it took as much willpower to get out of a nice hot shower as it did to get in a cold one.

… Probably would have been even nicer with the right kind of company, but the right kind of company was still asleep, nothing but cute nose, blonde hair and fuzzy blue socks visible, wrapped up in the entire square mile of bedding like a stubbornly snoring burrito.

_Cold_, I realized as I got dressed. I lit a fire in the hearth and left a note, telling her where I was going, and resisted the urge to wake her up, ask her if she needed anything.

Much as I hated to admit it, Thomas was right.

And he was still at the kitchen table with the pot of coffee and the yellow notepad from the fridge. He tapped the clicky end of a pen against his nose, then wrote something down.

"Okay," I said as I sat down on the counter by the sink. "Help me out."

"First things first." He made a face as he looked me over. "We need to do something about _this_. It's not easy to get laid while looking like Grizzly Adams." He nodded in the direction of the Carpenter house. "Although, judging by the number of kids in that van, it works for some women—"

"I look alright." I poured the last of the coffee into another mug. "I mean with the rest of it."

"You look like you're an eye patch away from playing basketball to the death." He glanced up at me. I shrugged and drank my coffee and let him get his hits in. "You look like you don't give a fuck about our war, or our president," Thomas continued seriously, though the corner of his mouth twitched as he made another note on the legal pad. "You look like a helicopter pilot that's been trapped at the South Pole, and I'm not talking about the new strip club in Joliet—"

"They opened a new – never mind." I shook my head and left the empty mug by the stove. "You know, when other people say things like that, they at least have the decency to frame it as a compliment."

"That's because she loves you, you big dumb idiot," Thomas said without looking up from his notes. I tossed the keys to Murphy's SUV at him, and he caught those without looking up, too.

An hour later we were sitting in a tiny barber shop downtown, run by an ancient man who understood English but spoke only Italian, and who was clued-in, or at least that's what I gathered from Thomas's description.

"Why can't you do this?" I asked my brother as the old geezer dropped a towel around my shoulders.

"Out of practice." Thomas dropped into the spinning chair next to mine and put his feet up on the mirrored table in front of him. He still had the yellow notepad he had swiped from my kitchen, and idly wrote as we talked. Every time I tried to lean over and read, he turned away. "And my license lapsed."

The old man rolled his eyes, waved a hand and muttered something in Italian as he stomped on the lever that lowered the chair.

"He says you're too damn tall," Thomas translated.

"I actually got that one, thanks," I said warily, as the guy started toward me with electric clippers so old they had probably been used to buzz jarheads in World War Two. The blade rattled against my skull and dark hair piled up on the black and white tile. There was a little more gray in it than I remembered.

"So what made you guys decide to finally give it a shot, anyway? The near-death thing?"

"We kind of talked about it after last year's near death thing," I said, trying to be as still as possible when the old barber whipped out a pair of scissors, snipping close to my ear.

"Oh?" Thomas chuckled, eyebrows climbing. "That explains it."

"Explains what?"

"The trip back to town, after all that." He met my eyes for a moment in the mirror. "I thought her thousand-yard stare and all the manic giggling was because she'd finally seen you naked. Bold move, going full frontal _and_ asking her out in the same night."

"I didn't ask her out," I said. "It was more like… uh. An ultimatum, I guess?"

My brother grinned proudly, and held a hand out for a celebratory fist bump. The barber disappeared into the back of the shop for a moment and returned with a tray containing a towel, a mug and a brush, and a straight razor.

I put both hands up. "Whoa, no—"

"She likes it, or he would have gotten rid of it by now." Thomas waved him off. "Just make him look less like he's from a John Carpenter flick."

_"Sto provando,"_ the old man cackled as he grabbed me by the chin and revved his ancient electric razor. I had seen sheep sheared with less enthusiasm, and being the unenthusiastic guy who had helped my grandfather with it for several years, I would know.

Ten minutes later, the old man tapped on my shoulder with a comb and turned the chair toward the mirror, and I watched the blood drain from my face. I waved at the reflection. It waved along with me. The barber, sweeping up behind me, shot me a funny look. I ran both hands over my face, through hair much shorter and neater than it had been lately, or at least since that misguided attempt to make my own incendiary shotgun rounds. It didn't look bad, exactly, just… unnervingly familiar. Though not quite as wickedly precise as _the guy in black, _as Molly had dubbed the shady fellow who ran my subconscious.

"Not bad," said Thomas. "And you got rid of that god-awful earring." He clapped me on the shoulder as he settled up with the barber. "Come on, I've got a few more errands to run, and then I've got a case I need your help with."

I felt my forehead crease. The old man handed me a paper lunch bag full of hair. "What kind of case?"

"Wooden. So big," he held his hands out about a foot and a half apart and grinned. "Full of glass bottles."

"Oh, thank god."

My sigh of relief was a little premature. He dragged me with him on a morning's worth of errands, some of which were hilariously mundane (the trip to Wal-Mart) and some were unsurprisingly Thomas-ish (a visit to one brightly-lit, high-end sex shop where all the interestingly pierced-and-tattooed girls on staff knew his name, like a really weird episode of _Cheers_).

Every time I caught a glimpse of my reflection, I almost jumped out of my skin.

By midday, we were posted in the deck chairs of the _Water Beetle,_ on either side of a beat-up metal drink cooler full to the top with amber bottles, near a growing pile of empties. Thomas had somehow managed to snag a better slip for the boat, closer to the harbor parking lot, which he watched impatiently.

"Mac would beat you to death with a spatula," he said as he saw me refreeze the melting ice. "Here. Gotcha something." Thomas held out one of two brown paper shopping bags.

I reached for it, hesitated. "This better not be porn."

His expression didn't change, but he held out the other bag instead.

_"The Big Book of Sudoku: 1001 Math Puzzles?"_ I read, peering at the contents. "I think I'd almost rather have the porn."

"Too late, hot plate." He produced a sheet of narrow-ruled yellow paper, folded in half, written on in his script. "And this."

"What is it?"

My brother smiled at me. "A list."

I took it. I read it silently. The paper was covered, front and back, with a long list of various sex acts, ranging from relatively tame to things I'd never even thought of doing, ranked by technicality and personal preference, the latter of which I could have lived the rest of my life without knowing. There were some poorly-drawn, X-rated stick-figure sketches in the margins.

I bit my lip and snickered, fairly proud of myself both for making it through the list without going red in the face, and for getting as far as I did before having to ask a question.

"What's, uh. Number thirty-seven?"

"It's like number nineteen but inverted. So, like—"

"Oh, no, I got it." I waved away his explanation and put the note in my coat pocket. "Thanks, Maverick."

"One more piece of advice? Make your move." Thomas checked his phone. "Or she will, and you aren't ready for that."

"You don't think I can keep it together—"

"I know you can. I just don't know if you can, _and_ last longer than a minute and a half."

I punched him in the shoulder, but he didn't even notice, his eyes on a white Range Rover that rumbled by and pulled into a parking space. A woman slid from behind the steering wheel, dressed for cold-weather sailing in blue jeans and a thick, cream-colored sweater, tan boat shoes, matching bag and leather gloves. Her silvery hair was pulled into a sleek knot that would have looked severe on anyone else.

"Hello, boys." Justine was pretty as a picture as she climbed the ramp from the dock. "Having fun?"

"Oh, you know." Thomas was on his feet in a heartbeat, next to her in less than that. The moment she put a hand on his arm, he was a completely different person. The sharp, cynical edge of his personality seemed to melt away, replaced by a goofy, boyish grin as he caught her gloved hand and kissed her knuckles. "Just trying to help Harry get laid."

"Still?" she asked with a wicked smile, as he wrapped an arm around her, pulling her back to rest his chin on her shoulder. They were as close as two people could be without actually touching – not a stray hair or square centimeter of skin made contact. They _couldn't_.

"It's a work in progress."

And they had somehow been making it work for _years_.

"He looks very handsome." Justine peered approvingly at me over her sunglasses.

"Easy, tiger. You had your chance. He's off the market, now."

She laughed demurely and winked at me. "We're going to dinner this evening, Harry, if you want to join us. I can call and add another seat to our reservation," Justine offered politely, but my brother was not-so-subtly nodding toward the dock.

Time to go.

"Thanks," I said, and stood to leave, shuffling toward the gangplank with my dirty laundry list and my math puzzle book. "But I've already got plans—"

"Wait, with who?" he demanded.

I told him. They grinned at each other, then at me.

"That's fucking _adorable," _said Thomas.

* * *

"Are you sure you don't mind going with me?"

"Of course not, kiddo."

The weather had not improved over the course of the day. Low gray clouds drifted over the water, across the darkening eastern horizon. There were a handful of cars already parked in a weedy gravel lot. A faded metal sign read _Lake Michigan Shore Access, _next to a narrow trail, which led to a strip of beach dotted with rocky patches and tall grass. I parked next to a truck with the tailgate down.

"Because we don't have to," Maggie glanced up at me, dark eyes shaded beneath a little brown baseball cap with her troop number on it. "We can just go get pizza or whatever, we don't _have_ to go to the meeting—"

"We don't. But we're already here." I put my hand over hers on the console between the front seats. "Do you want to do something else instead? That's fine if you do."

"No," she puffed her cheeks out and sighed resignedly as she unbuckled her seatbelt. "You're right. We're already here."

She took my hand as we crossed the parking lot. There was already a small crowd standing by the sign, huddled together, being addressed by a short woman about Molly's age, who wore a brown hooded sweatshirt with the same troop number patch on the sleeve. A cloud of dark, tightly-curled hair danced around her face as she bounced on the balls of her feet, giving out directions and work gloves and garbage bags to the twenty or so girls and half as many mothers.

"And I know the weather isn't perfect, but it won't take long. And once we're done with cleanup, it's time for s'mores!" she announced, to some cheering.

She turned and nearly ran into me, then stared up at me, clutching a fistful of trash-poking sticks to her chest. Her features seemed kind, but her expression was defensive, eyes narrowed behind a pair of tortoiseshell-framed glasses.

"Can I help you, sir?" the woman asked in a tight voice, like she was willing to be quite a bit less than helpful, if it was necessary.

I liked her already. "Actually, I'm here to help you."

"Miss Baker, this is my dad."

Her eyes fell on Maggie, who was standing close to me, still holding my hand.

"Oh!" The woman blinked at us, a fuchsia flush spread across tawny cheekbones. "I'm so sorry, Maggie, I didn't even see you there. Where's Mouse? And Charity and the girls?"

"Hope has a cold," Maggie explained.

"And Mouse took the night off," I continued, offering a hand. "Harry."

"Nice to meet you." Troop Leader Miss Baker shook my hand vigorously. "Love the shirt."

"Thanks." I'd left the duster in the car and dressed for work – boots, jeans, an old gray canvas field jacket that had a lot of pockets for wizardy stuff, and a black shirt that Thomas had made me buy, which read _Annual_ _Middle Earth Mordor Fun Run! One Does Not Simply Walk!_

"Hand these out, will you?" said as she pushed the handful of poky sticks at me.

I gave half to Maggie and distributed the rest to the affluent, kind of uptight and somewhat homogenous bunch from the Carpenter's neighborhood. There were a lot of confidently-worn yoga pants and _North Face_ jackets that had likely never seen so much as a hiking trail until today. The girls flocked away from me, giggling nervously, and the grown women were avoiding eye contact with me and excusing themselves out of making small talk, or giving me suspicious glares, which I was accustomed to and barely registered.

I did what I had come to do — pick up trash and keep an eye on Maggie, who was currently being bombarded with questions by the group of girls collecting garbage from among the rocks at the shoreline. I didn't have to eavesdrop, the wind carried their voices to me, plain as day.

"He's _real?"_

"I told you he was real."

"We thought you just made him up," said one of a pair of fair-haired, absolutely identical twins. "We thought you were just telling a story," said the other. "What happened to his face? He's all scratched up."

"He looks nice. But kinda scary? Like the hit man from that movie," said an older girl with auburn pigtails. "The one with the dog."

"Well, I think he's cute."

"Okay, ew." Maggie frowned. "And he's not a hit man. He's an investigator."

"What does that even mean?" demanded the smallest, youngest girl, who looked like a scaled-down version of the troop leader.

"It means he's an artist, and all he draws are pictures of fancy alligators wearing vests," said Maggie. A few of the older girls giggled, and so did I as I collected beer cans.

"An investigator, that's like solving mysteries," said a tall blonde girl with braces. "Like crimes and missing people and stuff?"

"That's _kinda_ like a hit man," said another.

"That's _nothing_ like a hit man," said a short blonde girl with freckles. "A hit man wears a suit and shoots people with a gun in a briefcase. Does he have a briefcase?"

"I dunno."

"Does he have a suit?"

Maggie shrugged. "He's got a coat."

"Hey, weirdo," said another girl, in a familiar, derisive tone that sent me hurtling back to third grade and right into a heretofore successfully-repressed memory of the kid who used to chase me to the group home after school, on his ten-speed, wielding his bike lock and chain like a flail.

… A sturdy tree branch through the front fork of that bike and a bit of Newton's First Law had put a really quick stop to that.

"Where's your fake mom and your dumb dog?" sneered the girl. She was a few years older, with straight, dark hair and pinched, scowling features. She had her own little cadre, three other similarly sour-faced companions. "Didn't want to be seen in public with you?"

"Ignore her," said my daughter, dismissively. "Harper's just mad 'cause I kicked her butt in the science fair and I'm gonna kick it again selling cookies."

"You know it doesn't count if your dad buys them all."

"He only bought twenty-five, which isn't even ten percent of what I've sold so far." Maggie shrugged. "You just need to get good. I can help you, if you want."

There was a chorus of _oohs _from the handful of girls behind her.

"Probably not even your real dad," the other girl sniped as she tried to poke a bit of newspaper caught in some grass, and then muttered a racial epithet a kid shouldn't even know.

It didn't take a fancy alligator artist to sense that she was a bit of a bitch, and that it was likely hereditary. There were some murmurs from the other girls but no one stepped forward to defend or correct or anything, and I had bitten my lip so hard I could taste blood.

I had done my best for most of my adult life to be sympathetic towards kids, especially troubled kids. I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, since so many other adults rarely would. All that to say, I had _never_ had the urge to pick one up by the collar and drop her in the lake until today. And I _almost_ started in their direction, ready with an entire reprimanding lecture – I'd made much scarier mean girls cry before – but I didn't have to.

"Sorry, I didn't hear you. Why don't you come a little closer," my daughter smiled mirthlessly. She had a white-knuckled grip on the trash picker in her hand, one more word from pointy-ending the foul-mouthed punk. "And say that again."

_Oh, shit. _

I feigned a cough and whispered "_Ventas servitas"_ behind my hand, and sent the trash around their ankles flying down the beach.

"Whatever," Maggie said, a flat reply to the too-late sounds of disapproval from the girls around her. "She runs like a Muppet," she observed as the other girl scampered down the sand after her scrap of newspaper. Maggie shook her head and jabbed a burger wrapper with undue force.

_Easy there, Arya Snark._ I had to stifle a snort, and the troop leader kind of snuck up on me.

"You'll have to forgive them, we don't get a lot of dads." Miss Baker rolled her eyes at the group of women giving me a fair berth, half-heartedly participating in the clean-up effort.

"Yeah, conservation is for _girls_."

"Mm. I see where Maggie gets her sense of humor." She snuck a sideways glance at me, a lot questions there that she was too polite to ask, and defaulted to the weather. "I'm surprised anyone showed today."

"I'd take this over the last place I did volunteer work."

She raised an eyebrow, probably assuming I meant compulsory community service.

"Summer camp in New Mexico," I explained. "Apparently summer in the desert is freaking miserable. Who knew?"

"Scouts?" said Baker, with a knowing nod. "I've been to El Paso, you're not wrong."

"Nah, just a camp, for uh…" I was fairly certain that _battle magic boot camp for teens_ wasn't the answer to go with. "Troubled youth?"

"Wonderful," she said, genuinely. "Camp counselor?"

"I was in charge of… uh, recreation," I said, lamely. "Wednesday Addams down there," I nodded towards the little bully. "Is her mother here? I'd like to speak to her, if she is."

"No," the woman sighed like she knew exactly what I was getting at. "Her step-sister brings her." She pointed toward a sullen-looking older teenager sitting on a rock down the shore, playing with her phone.

"Ah."

"You know," the troop leader said, "We've been working on getting our campfire badges, and Maggie missed the last meeting. If you want to help her with it, I can go ahead and mark it as completed, that way she can get her badge when I hand the rest out tonight."

"I can definitely do that."

"Awesome. I'll send her that way." She took my bag of trash. "There's a box of supplies in the bed of my truck."

We met up at a weather-beaten ring of stones halfway between the parking lot and the water's edge. There was an empty beer bottle in the cold ashes. I picked it out, but let Maggie do the rest - she assembled the firewood and read through the safety checklist all on her own.

"Okay, back to the wind." I caught her by the shoulders and turned her as she tried to strike a match. "Now try."

She went through a handful of matches, breaking one after another in her attempt. "Why don't you just… y'know." She wiggled her fingers at the firewood, and impatiently cast another broken match down in the pile of tinder.

"That would be cheating. And none of these nice ladies have ever seen real magic before, and they would crap a brick."

Maggie giggled. "That's a lot of bricks."

"Enough to build a better fire pit."

"Ew."

"And," I said, as I handed her another match, "This is one of those things everybody should know how to do. Like taxes or how to change a tire. Try again."

She frowned stubbornly and raked another match against the sandpaper side of the box. A flame caught and her eyes went wide. She dropped it into the pile of tinder and a tiny fire flickered to life in the dry grass beneath the wood. "Yes!" She clapped her hands together eagerly and held them out to warm over the flames, smiling happily for the first time since we had arrived. I hadn't been completely sure about the outing, but she was doing well without the emotional buffer of her foster siblings and her giant dog, even after dealing with a bully.

"Good work. Why don't you go help the rest of the girls finish up, I'll keep an eye on this."

"Okay," she said, giving me a quick hug.

It didn't take long for the clean-up effort to wind down. All the garbage was loaded into the back of the troop leader's truck and some folding chairs were put out, some badges were distributed and one of the slightly-friendlier mothers produced a shopping bag of marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars. I had managed to get by with only fielding a few polite-but-personal questions when a tall, ginger-haired woman turned to me.

"You moved into the empty place down the street from Charity and Michael, right, Mister Dresden?"

I nodded. She had caught me right as I took a huge bite of burnt marshmallow.

"I thought so. I was walking the dog last weekend, I saw you sitting on the front porch, braiding some blonde woman's hair. Your wife?"

"No, uh—"

"His _girlfriend_," Maggie said in a stage whisper, to a chorus of giggles from the girls and _aw's _from the mothers. "She hurt her arm and she can't." The girl glanced at me, wearing a dangerous grin that dared me to deny it, looking an awful lot like her uncle for a moment. I had a mouthful of melted marshmallow, and couldn't say a damned thing. She pointed at the Princess Leia buns beneath her hat and grinned. "He did my hair, too."

I was never more relieved for the weather to turn. Fat raindrops pattered the shoreline and thunder rumbled over the lake. The scouts and their mothers fled to their cars as I kicked sand onto the fire. Maggie pulled the hood of her raincoat up.

"Pizza?" I asked.

"Definitely."

We took the long way back to town and stopped at a pizza joint in my old neighborhood; one of those shabby-but-clean places with the checkered tablecloths, red plastic Coke cups and shakers full of fake cheese. Rat Pack music played on a jukebox in the corner and there were faded posters from the _Godfather_ movies tacked on the walls. There was an attempt at an arcade, with games so old that they had become cool again.

The restaurant was empty except for us, the staff, and a handful of burly, biker looking types at the booth in the corner. They nodded in recognition when they saw me – apparently the local members of the Viking mafia also enjoyed cheap beer, mediocre food and the songs of Nirvana done in the style of Dean Martin.

"Something wrong?" I asked during a lull in the conversation as Maggie stared out the window. She frowned as she turned her campfire pin over and over in her fingers. We had managed to take down an entire medium pizza between us, most of a basket of breadsticks and a pitcher of soda. Conservation may be for girls, but it was a lot of hungry work.

Maggie shook her head.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded silently.

"Hey," I said, putting the last slice of double pepperoni on her plate. "I heard some of what that mean girl was saying to you earlier, and I wanted to tell you I'm super proud of you for not punching her in her mean little face."

She slumped into the seat with a squeak of raincoat on vinyl, and her expression turned embarrassed, annoyed. "Harper's a jealous bitch," she blurted, and then rolled her eyes in a carbon-copy imitation of Molly. "And she's not worth wasting a punch."

I tried _really_ hard not to laugh. The Einherjaren a few tables over did no such thing. Gruff chuckling filtered through the sounds of _One for My Baby,_ until I stared at them over my shoulder for a moment. The laughter died.

Growing up, I'd never had an adult in my life who I felt I could be completely honest with, someone I could trust enough that I felt comfortable saying exactly what was on my mind. Probably would have been better off if I had. I tried not to laugh, and I waited for her to go on.

"But Mrs. Carpenter says—" the girl continued, glumly. "Mrs. Carpenter said she has trouble at home and I have to be the better person and try to be friends with her and turn the other cheek."

"No," I said firmly. I'm all for non-violent confrontation when it can be done, but putting the responsibility for a bully's mental health onto their victim is just fucking stupid, no two ways around it. "You don't have to be friends with her. Friends don't talk to each other like that."

"No?"

"Nope. Would you ever say anything like that to any of your friends? Or even some stranger on the street?"

"Well, no."

"Then you're already a better person without even trying."

"I really wanted to hit her, though," she admitted, meeting my eyes for a moment.

"That's understandable. Just… don't do that unless you have to."

"Okay," she nodded, looking relieved.

"Feel better?"

"A little," she mumbled.

"Would it help if maybe we…" I leaned in closer and put a handful of change on the table. "Made the jukebox play the same Tom Jones song fifteen times in a row?"

Maggie smiled hugely, collecting the quarters. "_Yes_."

She did just that, and we left the undead Vikings to enjoy the rest of their very upbeat, pop-filled evening. I dropped Maggie off with the leftover breadsticks for Mouse, and headed home.

All the lights were out except for one over the kitchen sink. The empty mugs Thomas and I had left were still on the kitchen counter, along with the evidence of a deli delivery. I could hear a man's voice down the hall, muffled but raised, and I reached for the tiny SIG in my duster pocket as I pushed open the bedroom door.

Murphy was asleep across the foot of the bed, her face in the crook of her elbow. The room was completely dark except for the blue glow spilling from the screen of her laptop as it played an episode of some police-procedural sci-fi drama_. _I frowned. The thing shouldn't have worked so well behind the wards, or at least that's what I thought until I saw the silver Monoc decal on the back. I pushed the screen shut and it turned off. I flicked a hand at the candles on the fireplace and they glowed to life.

She had made it out of bed at some point, at least long enough to change into a thin white tank top that clung and stretched and rode up in all the right places, and black gym shorts. I stopped staring long enough to snicker – she wore just one of the ridiculously fluffy pink house shoes her mother had brought up to the hospital. The other was on the floor, being wrestled into submission by the cat. Murph cradled a package of Oreos in her injured arm, a copy of _American Gods_ under her other hand.

There was an empty prescription bottle on the footlocker by the bed, a yellow sticky note on the face of the Spider-Man alarm clock.

_Harry—_

_PT tomorrow morning 8am.  
Don't let me sleep through the alarm._

The note was signed with a heart, instead of just her initials, like so many notes that had been left on the door of my office. I put it in my coat pocket with the list I'd been given earlier, the subcompact pistol, the empty fifty-cal casing. I hung my coat on the back of the door and collected her books and snacks and laptop and put them in the chair by the fireplace, then kicked out of my clothes and flopped down next to her.

I sighed, waved my hand at the candles again and let the room fade into darkness before I wrapped both arms around her and pulled her as close as I dared.

"Harry." She turned towards me with a sleepy sigh of her own and slipped an arm around me, fingertips stroking a spot just between my shoulder blades. I hadn't even realized I was tense. "What's wrong?"

"Not a damn thing."

"You're a terrible liar—"

I interrupted her the best way I knew how. It had been a really long day full of stuff I didn't really want to talk about, not when we could be busy… not talking. And we were really good at not talking, and she warm and soft against my chest, against my lips. Might as well start at the top of the list.

"Well. Nothing that can't wait."

* * *

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